🌈🌻🌼📘🎥Friday's Film Adaptation🎥📘🌼🌻🌈: Spartacus by Howard Fast

Summary:

Spartacus, a fictionalization of a slave revolt in ancient Rome in 71 BC, is well known today because of the 1960 movie starring Kirk Douglas and Laurence Olivier. It was originally published in 1951 by Fast himself, after being turned down by every mainstream publisher of the day because of Fast's blacklisting for his Communist Party sympathies. The story of Spartacus, born a slave, trained as a gladiator, who led a slave revolt that was eventually put down by Crassus, was immensely popular, and went on to sell millions of copies. The reprinting of this title in the North Castle series brings back into print a book that many regard as a classic.

PART ONE 

How Caius Crassus journeyed along the highroad from Rome to Capua, in the month of May.

It is recorded that as early as the middle of the month of March, the highroad from the Eternal City, Rome, to the somewhat smaller but hardly less lovely town of Capua, was opened to public travel once again; but this is not to say that traffic upon this road immediately reverted to normal. For that matter, during the past four years no road in the Republic had known the peaceful and prosperous flow of commerce and person which was to be expected of a Roman road. More or less of disturbance had been encountered everywhere, and it would not be incorrect to say that the road between Rome and Capua had become symbolic of this disturbance. It was well said that as the roads go, so does Rome go; if the roads know peace and prosperity, so does the city know it.

The news was posted around the city that any free citizen having business in Capua might travel there to transact it, but for the time being travel for pleasure to that lovely resort was not encouraged. However, as time passed and sweet and gentle springtime settled down over the land of Italy, restrictions were lifted, and once again the fine buildings and splendid scenery of Capua called to the Romans.

In addition to the natural attractions of the Campania countryside, those who enjoyed fine perfume yet balked at inflated prices, found profit as well as pleasure in Capua. There were situated the great perfume factories, unequaled in the whole world; and to Capua were shipped the rare essences and oils from all over the earth, exotic and exquisite scents, Egyptian oil of roses, the essence of the lilies of Sheba, the poppies of Galilee, the oil of ambergris and of the rind of lemon and orange, the leaf of sage and mint, rose-wood and sandal-wood, and so forth and so on almost without end. Perfume at Capua could be purchased at less than half the price asked in Rome, and when one considers the growing popularity of scents in that time, for men as well as for women—and the necessity for them as well—one can understand that a trip to Capua for that, if for no other reason, might well be undertaken.

 

II

The road was opened in March, and two months later, in the middle of May, Caius Crassus and his sister, Helena, and her friend, Claudia Marius, set off to spend a week with relatives in Capua. They left Rome on the morning of a bright, clear and cool day, a perfect day for travel, all of them young and bright-eyed and full of delight in the trip and in the adventures which would certainly befall them. Caius Crassus, a young man of twenty-five, whose dark hair fell in abundant and soft ringlets and whose regular features had given him a reputation for good looks as well as good birth, rode a beautiful white Arabian horse, a birthday present from his father the year before, and the two girls travelled in open litters. Each litter was carried by four slaves who were road-broken and who could do ten miles at a smooth run without resting. They planned to spend five days on the road, putting up each evening at the country villa of a friend or relative, and this way, by easy and pleasant stages, to come to Capua. They knew before they started that the road was tokened with punishment, but they didn’t think it would be enough to disturb them. As a matter of fact, the girls were quite excited by the descriptions they had heard, and as for Caius, he always had a pleasant and somewhat sensuous reaction to such things, and he was also proud of his stomach and of the fact that such sights did not inordinately disturb him.

“After all,” he reasoned with the girls, “it is better to look at a crucifix than to be on one.”

“We shall look straight ahead,” Helena said.

She was better looking than Claudia who was blond but listless, pale skin and pale eyes and an air of fatigue which she nurtured. Her body was full and attractive, but Caius found her rather stupid and wondered what his sister saw in her—a problem he was determined to solve on this trip. He had several times before resolved to seduce his sister’s friend, and always the resolution had broken down before her listless disinterest, a disinterest not specific in terms of himself, but general. She was bored, and Caius was certain that only her boredom prevented her from being utterly boring. His sister was something else. His sister excited him in a fashion that troubled him; she was as tall as he, very similar to him in appearance—better looking if anything, and considered beautiful by men who were not fended away by her purpose and strength. His sister excited him, and he was conscious that in planning this trip to Capua, he hoped for some resolution of this excitement. His sister and Claudia made an odd but satisfying combination, and Caius looked forward to rewarding incidents on the journey.

A few miles outside of Rome, the tokens of punishment began. There was a place where the road crossed a little wasteland of rock and sand, a few acres in extent, and the person in charge of the exhibit had, with an eye for effect, chosen this particular spot for the first crucifix. The cross had been cut out of fresh new wood, pitch-bleeding pine, and since the ground fell away behind it, it stood stark and bare and angular against the morning sky, so huge and impressive—over-large, since it was the first—that one hardly noticed the naked body of the man who hung upon it. It stood slightly askew, as is so often the case with the top-heavy crucifix, and this added to its bizarre, demi-human quality. Caius drew up his horse, and then walked the animal toward the crucifix; and with a little flick of her courtesy quirt, Helena ordered the litter-slaves to follow.

“May we rest, oh mistress, oh mistress?” whispered the pace setter of Helena’s litter, when they came to a halt before the crucifix. He was a Spaniard, and his Latin was broken and wary.

“Of course,” said Helena. She was only twenty-three, but already of strong opinion, as all the women of her family were, and she despised senseless cruelty toward animals, whether slave or beast. Then the litter-bearers gently lowered the carriages, squatting gratefully beside them.

A few yards in front of the crucifix, on a straw chair shaded by a small, patched awning, sat a fat, amiable man of distinction and poverty. His distinction was manifest in each of his several chins and in the dignity of his huge paunch, and his poverty, not unmixed with sloth, was plainly evident by his poor and dirty clothes, his grimy finger nails and his stubble of beard. His amiability was the easily worn mask of the professional politician; and one could see at a glance that for years he had scavenged the Forum and the Senate and the wards as well. Here he was now, the last step before he became a beggar with only a mat in some Roman lodging house; yet his voice rolled out with the robust quackery of a barker at a fair. These were the fortunes of war, as he made plain to them. Some choose the right party with uncanny facility. He had always chosen the wrong one, and it was no use saying that essentially they were both the same. This is where it brought him, but better men fared less well.

“You will forgive me for not rising, my gentle sir and my gentle ladies, but the heart—the heart.” He put his hand on the great paunch in the general area. “I see you are out early, and early you should be out, since that is the time for travel. Capua?”

“Capua,” said Caius.

“Capua indeed—a lovely city, a beautiful city, a fair city, a veritable gem of a city. To visit relatives, no doubt?”

“No doubt,” answered Caius. The girls were smiling. He was amiable; he was a great clown. His dignity slipped away. Better to be a clown for these young people. Caius realized that there was money involved somewhere in these proceedings, but he didn’t mind. For one thing, he had never been denied money sufficient for all his needs or whims, and for another, he desired to impress the girls with his worldliness, and how better than through this worldly fat clown of a man?

“You see me a guide, a story teller, a small purveyor of bits of punishment and justice. Yet does a judge do more? The station is different, yet better to accept a denarius and the shame that goes with it than to beg—”

The girls couldn’t keep their eyes from the dead man who hung from the crucifix. He was directly above them now, and they kept darting glances at his naked, sun-blackened, bird-torn body. The crows swooped around him tentatively. The flies crawled on his skin. As he hung, his body leaning out and away from the cross, he seemed always to be falling, always in motion, a grotesque motion of the dead. His head hung forward, and his long, sandy hair covered what horror might have been in his face.

Caius gave the fat man a coin; the thanks was no more than what was due. The bearers squatted silently, never glancing at the crucifix, eyes on the ground; roadbroken they were, and well trained.

“This one is symbolic, so as to speak,” said the fat man. “Mistress mine, do not regard it as human or horrible. Rome gives and Rome takes, and more or less, the punishment fits the crime. This one stands alone and calls your attention to what will follow. Between here and Capua, do you know how many?”

They knew, but they waited for him to say it. There was a precision about this fat, jovial man who introduced them to what was unspeakable. He was proof that it was not unspeakable but ordinary and natural. He would give them an exact figure. It might not be right, but it would be precise.

“Six thousand, four hundred and seventy-two,” he said.

A few of the litter-bearers stirred. They were not resting, they were rigid. If anyone had regarded them, they would have noticed that. But no one regarded them.

“Six thousand, four hundred and seventy-two,” the fat man repeated. Caius made the right remark. “That much timber,” Caius said. Helena knew it was a fraud, but the fat man nodded appreciatively. Now they were en rapport. The fat man extracted a cane from the folds of his gown and gestured at the crucifix.

“That one—merely a token. A token of a token, so as to speak.”

Claudia giggled nervously.

“Nevertheless of interest and of importance. Set apart with reason. Reason is Rome and Rome is reasonable.” He was fond of maxims.

“Is that Spartacus?” Claudia asked foolishly, but the fat man found patience for her. The way he licked his lips proved that his paternal attitude was not unmixed with emotion, and Caius thought,

“The lecherous old beast.”

“Hardly Spartacus, my dear.”

“His body was never found,” Caius said impatiently.

“Cut to pieces,” the fat man said pompously. “Cut to pieces, my dear child. Tender minds for such dreadful thoughts, but that’s the truth of it—”

Claudia shuddered, but deliciously, and Caius saw a light in her eyes he had never noticed before. “Beware of superficial judgments,” his father had once said to him, and while his father had weightier matters in mind than estimation of women, it held. Claudia had never looked at him as she looked at the fat man now; and he continued,

“—the simple truth of it. And now they say Spartacus never existed. Hah! Do I exist? Do you exist? Are there or are there not six thousand, four hundred and seventy-two corpses hanging from crucifixes between here and Capua along the Appian Way? Are there or are there not? There are indeed. And let-me ask you another question, my young folk—why so many? A token of punishment is a token of punishment. But why six thousand, four hundred and seventy-two?”

“The dogs deserved it,” Helena answered quietly.

“Did they?” The fat man raised a sophisticated brow. He was a man of the world, he made plain to them, and if they were higher in station, they were younger enough in years to be impressed. “Perhaps they did, but why butcher so much meat if one can’t eat it? I’ll tell you. Keeps the price up. Stabilizes things. And most of all, decides some very delicate questions of ownership. There you have the answer in a nutshell. Now this one here—” gesturing with his cane, “—have a good look at him. Fairtrax, the Gaul, most important, most important. A close man to Spartacus, yes, indeed, and I watched him die. Sitting right here, I watched him die. It took four days. Strong as an ox. My, oh my, you would never believe such strength. Never believe it at all. I have my chair here from Sextus, of the Third Ward. You know him? A gentleman—a very great gentleman, and well disposed toward me. You’d be surprised how many people came out to watch, and it was something well worth watching. Not that I could charge them a proper fee—but people give if you give them something in return. Fair measure for fair measure. I took the trouble to inform myself. You’d be surprised what profound ignorance there is here and there about, concerning the wars of Spartacus. Now see here, this young lady, she asks me, is that one Spartacus? A natural question, but wouldn’t it be exceedingly unnatural if it was so. You gentle ones live a sheltered life, very sheltered, otherwise the young lady would have known that Spartacus was cut up so that not hair nor hide of him was ever found. Quite different with this one—he was taken. Cut up a little, true—see here—”

With his cane, he traced a long scar on the side of the body above him.

“Number of scars—and most interesting. Side or front. None in the back. You don’t want to stress such details for the rabble, but I can tell you as a matter of fact—”

The litter-bearers were watching him now and listening, their eyes gleaming out of their long, matted hair.

“—that these were the best soldiers that ever walked on Italian soil. Bears thinking about, something like that. Come back to our friend up here. Took four days for him to die, and it would have taken a good deal longer if they hadn’t opened a vein and bled him a bit. Now you may not know that, but you got to do it when you put them on the cross. Either you bleed them or they swell up like a bloater. And if you bleed them properly, then they dry properly and they can hang up there for maybe a month with no more offense than a little bit of smell. Just like curing a piece of meat, and you want plenty of sunshine to help it along. Now this was a fierce one, all right, defiant, proud—but he lost it. First day, he hung up there and cursed out every decent citizen who came along to watch. Frightful, foul language; you wouldn’t want any ladies around to hear such language. Comes of no breeding, and a slave is a slave, but I bore him no ill will. Here I was and there he was, and now and then I’d say to him, Your misfortune is my fortune, and while yours may not be the most comfortable way to die, mine is by no means the most comfortable way to earn a living. And precious little I’ll earn, you keep up that kind of talk. Didn’t seem to move him much, one way or another, but toward evening of the second day, he closed up. Clammed up, tight as a trap. Do you know what was the last thing he said?”

“What?” whispered Claudia.

“I will return and I will be millions. Just that. Fanciful, isn’t it?

“What did he mean?” Caius wondered. In spite of himself, the fat man had woven a spell over him.

“Now what did he mean, young sir? I have no more idea than you have, and he never spoke again either. I poked him up a little the next day, but he never said a word, just looked at me out of those bloodshot eyes of his, looked at me like he could kill me, but he wasn’t for killing anything else. So you see, my dear,” addressing Claudia again, “he wasn’t Spartacus, but was one of his lieutenants and a hard man. Close to Spartacus, but not so hard. That was a hard one, was Spartacus, hard indeed. You would not like to meet him along this highroad and never will neither, for he’s dead and rotting. Now what else would you like to know?”

“I think we’ve heard enough,” Caius said, regretting the denarius now. “We must be on our way.”

The slave Spartacus survives brutal training as a gladiator and leads a violent revolt against the decadent Roman Republic, as the ambitious Crassus seeks to gain power by crushing the uprising.

Release Date: October 6, 1960

Release Time: 197 minutes

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Cast:

Kirk Douglas as Spartacus

Laurence Olivier as Crassus

Jean Simmons as Varinia

Charles Laughton as Gracchus

Peter Ustinov as Batiatus

John Gavin as Julius Caesar

Nina Foch as Helena Glabrus

John Ireland as Crixus

Herbert Lom as Tigranes Levantus

John Dall as Marcus Publius Glabrus

Charles McGraw as Marcellus

Joanna Barnes as Claudia Marius

Harold J. Stone as David

Woody Strode as Draba

Peter Brocco as Ramon

Paul Lambert as Gannicus

Robert J. Wilke as Guard Captain

Nicholas Dennis as Dionysius

John Hoyt as Caius

Frederic Worlock as Laelius

Tony Curtis as Antoninus

Awards:

33rd Academy Awards - April 17, 1961

Best Supporting Actor - Peter Ustinov - Won

Best Art Direction–Color - Alexander Golitzen, Eric Orbom, Russell A. Gausman and Julia Heron - Won

Best Cinematography–Color - Russell Metty - Won

Best Costume Design–Color - Arlington Valles and Bill Thomas - Won

Best Film Editing - Robert Lawrence - Nominated

Best Music Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture - Alex North - Nominated

14th BAFTAs - 1961

Best Film - Stanley Kubrick - Nominated

18th Golden Globes - March 16, 1961

Best Motion Picture–Drama - Won

Best Actor in a Motion Picture–Drama - Laurence Olivier - Nominated

Best Supporting Actor–Motion Picture - Woody Strode - Nominated

Best Supporting Actor–Motion Picture - Peter Ustinov - Nominated

Best Director–Motion Picture - Stanley Kubrick - Nominated

Best Original Score–Motion Picture - Alex North - Nominated

AFIs 100 Years . . . 

100 Thrills (2001) - #62

100 Heroes and Villains (2003) - Spartacus - #22 Hero

100 Cheers (2006) - #44

100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) (2007) - #81

AFI's 10 Top 10 (2008) - #5 Epic Film

Notes:

From Wikipedia:

Among the deleted footage was a bath scene in which the Roman patrician and general Crassus attempts to seduce his slave Antoninus, speaking about the analogy of "eating oysters" and "eating snails" to express his opinion that sexual preference is a matter of taste rather than morality. The four-minute scene had been removed following an objection by the National Legion of Decency. When the film was restored (two years after Olivier's death), the original dialogue recording of this scene was missing; it had to be redubbed. Tony Curtis, by then 66, was able to re-record his part, but Crassus' voice was an impersonation of Olivier by Anthony Hopkins.

Howard Fast

Howard Fast (1914–2003) was one of the most prolific American writers of the twentieth century. He was a bestselling author of more than eighty works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and screenplays. The son of immigrants, Fast grew up in New York City and published his first novel upon finishing high school in 1933. In 1950, his refusal to provide the United States Congress with a list of possible Communist associates earned him a three-month prison sentence. During his incarceration, Fast wrote one of his best-known novels, Spartacus (1951). Throughout his long career, Fast matched his commitment to championing social justice in his writing with a deft, lively storytelling style.

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📘🎥Friday's Film Adaptation🎥📘: April Morning by Howard Fast

Summary:

Howard Fast’s bestselling coming-of-age novel about one boy’s introduction to the horrors of war amid the brutal first battle of the American Revolution.

On April 19, 1775, musket shots ring out over Lexington, Massachusetts. As the sun rises over the battlefield, fifteen-year-old Adam Cooper stands among the outmatched patriots, facing a line of British troops.

 

Determined to defend his home and prove his worth to his disapproving father, Cooper is about to embark on the most significant day of his life. The Battle of Lexington and Concord will be the starting point of the American Revolution—and when Cooper becomes a man.

 

Sweeping in scope and masterful in execution, April Morning is a classic of American literature and an unforgettable story of one community’s fateful struggle for freedom.

CHAPTER 1

The Afternoon

When I turned back to the house, my father called after me and asked me did I figure that I was finished. "I figure so," I said, and then my father said, in that way he has of saying something that cuts you down to half of your size or less:

"Slow to start and quick to finish."

He said it plain and quiet, but it was of a piece and it reminded me that I couldn't think of a time when he had said something pleasing or gentle with love or concern; and I replied to him, but not aloud—for which I didn't have the guts at all—"If just once in all my born days you'd say a good thing to me, then maybe I'd show good to you, and be able to do what you want me to do, and maybe read your mind or your soul." But aloud I said nothing, just began to walk toward the house, and his voice coiled after me like a whip around my ankle:

"Adam!"

"Yes, sir."

"I'll have you talk to me face to face, not into the air with your back to me."

"Yes, sir," I said, turning around.

"Draw your mother's evening water and bring it to her. Wasted steps are like wasted thoughts, just as empty and just as ignorant."

"Yes, Father," I said, and I went to the house and picked up the yoke and walked with it to the well. The sun was cutting. That's the time of the day when the sun touches the trees for evening time. That's the time of the day when the wind stops, and the air is so sweet you can taste it and suck it.

But that afternoon, the time of the day made me think about death, and I saw a chicken hawk in flight and waited for someone somewhere to send a load of bird shot after it; but no one did. I thought of death and was full of fear, and I just wanted to sit down somewhere and put my face in my hands and give in to the terrible frightened feeling I had; but I didn't. I have all kinds of strange thoughts and feelings of that sort, and I guess I never talked to anyone about them, except perhaps a little to Granny, because I didn't really believe that anyone in the world ever had just the same kind of thoughts.

When I drew the water from the well, I said the spell to take the curse off water, "Holy ghost and holy hell, get thee out of the mossy well." My father once heard me say that spell, and he took me into the barn and gave me seven with the birch rod. He hated spells and said they were worse than an instrument of the devil; they were an instrument of ignorance. And I was foolish enough to answer back that if he was so sure about all kinds of superstition, why did he birch me seven times, not eight or six? That was the way it was in the whole town. When you got the rod taken to you, you got it seven times.

I should have known enough to keep my mouth shut, because he replied that he was gratified to be enlightened and laid onto me ten times more, and then wanted to know whether I deemed seventeen to be a superstitious number?

So now I said the spell quietly, just moving my lips; a spell has no meaning if you only think it to yourself and never voice it. But quiet or not, my brother Levi, who is eleven years old, has cat's eyes. He popped up and demanded a drink from the bucket.

"Draw your own water," I told him.

"Don't be high and mighty. I seen you saying the spell. How would you like for me to tell Father that I seen you saying the spell?"

"You're a little bastard," I told him.

"Sure, and what did you just call your mother?"

"All right. Take your drink and leave me be. Why don't you stay out of my sight. I'd be happy to God if only you'd stay out of my sight."

I took a drink too. The water is always best, cold and crackling, when you first draw it.

When I came into the house, Mother was frying donkers, and the kitchen was full of the smell. You save a week's meat leftovers to make donkers, and then it's chopped together with bread and apples and raisins and savory spices, and fried and served up with boiled pudding. I don't know of anything better. When my mother saw me come in with the yoke, she took the water off and smiled her gratitude.

"You're a good boy, Adam," she said.

I didn't tell her that it wasn't my idea. I needed for someone to think something good about me, and I didn't want to disturb her thinking. When I ate some of the raw meatstuff, she slapped my hand. When I sat down, she said:

"Are you going to stay here and fill my head with your nonsense?"

"What nonsense? I haven't said a word."

"That's just it, Adam. You sit there with that look in your eyes, and just as plain as daylight I can see what kind of silly dream you're contemplating. When I was your age, if a boy had an hour between the chores and mealtime, he spent it with profit reading the Holy Writ. Granny told me how your father—just about your age it was—set himself a disciplined period to memorize three verses of Lamentations every evening."

"Lamentations?"

"And he did."

"Well, good heavens, what on earth did he want to memorize the verses of Lamentations every evening for?"

"To profit himself. And let me tell you this, Adam," she said. "I don't hold with the narrow views of some, but it seems to me that an expression like good heavens is precious close to swearing. It seems to me that the King's English is abundant enough to express every necessary shade of feeling and impatience without resorting to words that have sincere meaning when used properly. Have you been fighting with your brother again?"

"Now what gave you that idea?" I didn't wait for her to tell me, but got up and began to stalk out the way I had come. She had to know where I was going.

"Just to find Granny."

"She's upstairs."

I went upstairs, and Granny was in her room making thread. When I entered, she blinked at me and said, "I see less and less. Old age is pity enough, but when the eyesight goes, the good Lord is laying a heavy burden on my poor shoulders."

"Well, Granny," I replied, "I don't think your eyesight is going. It's just getting dark in here because the twilight has come down."

"Is that so, Adam?"

"Sure enough."

"Well, then, I've spun sufficiently," she declared. "Sit down, Adam. Do you want some sweets?"

I sat down on her old milking stool, which she had decorated with paint and turned into one of the prettiest things in the house, and reminded her that there was a widely held opinion to the effect that sweets before mealtime spoil an appetite.

"Oh?" she said. "I'm sure we'd all be rich if I could devise something to spoil your appetite, Adam." Then she went to the cupboard and got out the cotton kerchief that she always wrapped the maple sugar in, and she broke off a piece for each of us. I ate it slowly and appreciatively, and asked her whether it was true about my father and Lamentations.

"It's true."

"Well, what for? I mean, what was his purpose?"

"To profit himself."

"That's what Mother said, but I'll be damned if I can see the profit in it."

"You will be damned, Adam, if you go on with such talk." I shrugged. "And don't act as if you don't care."

"I think we keep saying things that we don't really mean at all, Granny."

"Do we? And what sort of things, Adam?"

"Like being damned. Do you believe in God, Granny?"

"What a question!" She snorted with great indignation. "In all my born days, Adam Cooper, I have never seen a boy like yourself for asking questions!"

"Well, do you?"

"Of course I do."

"Well, I don't know—"

"Adam Cooper, you are not going to start in again with all that silly nonsense of yours, are you?"

"Just one thing—just answer me one thing, Granny, that's all I'm asking. I just want you to answer me one thing. Why is it that they're always taking it out on me for whatever I say, like there's nothing in the world I can do right and everything I do is all wrong?"

"My goodness, the things you say, Adam!"

"Well, look at it this way, Granny. You believe in God, don't you?"

"Enough of that."

"If you believe in God, then God gave a person brains, didn't he?"

"Of course."

"But just as soon as you begin to use the brains God gave you, you're being sinful."

"That's just the sort of foolish thing you say, Adam, that's so provoking."

"Well, just take Isaiah Peterkin, for example."

"Oh, no," she said, her eyes narrowing, "I am not going to be trapped into that Isaiah Peterkin thing. It just happens that I was gathering blueberries the other day, and there you were down in the gully with Ruth Simmons, instructing her about Isaiah Peterkin, and I overheard enough—"

"Did you see us, Granny?"

"I didn't have to see you. As if I wouldn't know that Cooper voice of yours anywhere!"

I sighed with relief, and told her that even if I had gone into it a little with Ruth Simmons, that didn't make it any less a fact.

"It just seems to me, Adam," Granny said, "that shaking a body loose from her faith is about the most sinful thing you could do."

"Granny, I wasn't shaking anybody loose from anybody's faith. I'd like you to tell me how old Isaiah can be as mean and wicked and two-faced as he is, and be a deacon in the church and be looked up to as a real fine God-fearing man. I mean, he can get away with anything, just so long as he says the right words about religion."

"It's not for you to judge Isaiah Peterkin."

"I wasn't judging him," I protested. "Everyone knows how rich and mean he is. So how could I be judging him? Anyway, in Boston when we were there a fortnight past, there was a man talking right on the Common, and he said that the highest good was to doubt. Just like that, in those very words."

"I never heard such nonsense. If he said that, he was nobody worth quoting."

"He was a Committeeman, Granny."

"I don't believe a word of it"

"Cross my heart, Granny."

"Don't you dare cross your heart to me," she snapped, "just like you was Roman or some other heathen sect, and don't think that because I'm old and rheumatic and grateful for foolish company that you can say anything you please in front of me. You can't cozen me with a pretense at stupidity, not in one thousand years. You're a spiteful boy, and that's why your father loses patience with you."

"He doesn't lose patience, Granny. He doesn't have any patience to begin with."

"There!"

"And this was a Committeeman," I said.

"So. Well, just tell me this—was he a Sam Adams Committeeman?"

I admitted that he was most likely a Sam Adams Committeeman, and she shrugged her shoulders and said there wasn't anything else a body could expect, seeing that Sam Adams was an atheist and so were all of his cronies. Granny had a good mind, and I guess that was one of the reasons why I enjoyed provoking her. The other reason was that she would stand for being provoked, and practically no one else would. "Now if he had said, Adam," she went on, "that one of the paths to good was a certain amount of doubt and common sense, there might be some reason to his thoughts. Then he would have been sensible. But doubt is a negative thing and good is a positive thing, and anyone who says that both are the same thing is simply a fool, and there you are."

"That's it exactly, Granny. When you disagree with someone, you straight out and call them a fool. But when I disagree, I get my ears pinned back."

"I'm older than you, Adam, by a year or two."

"You said yourself that age doesn't teach most folks a blessed thing."

"Don't tell me what I said. If you propose to remain as narrow and opinionated as you are now all the years of your life—well, that's your choice. Most folks are one thing. I should hope that my grandson would be something else."

At that moment, Mother called from below that supper was ready, and I gave Granny my arm and helped her down the stairs. Her rheumatism was getting worse and worse. As we went down the staircase, myself a little in front of her because the staircase was so narrow, she said to me:

"Don't ever talk most to me, Adam. Most folks are not Coopers, and most folks do not live in this village or in this county either. Most folks are not dissenters, and most folks would just as soon find a chain to put around their necks, considering one wasn't there already. Coopers have been teachers and pastors and free yeomen farmers and ship captains and merchants for a hundred and fifty years on this soil, and I don't recall one of them who couldn't write a sermon and deliver it too, if the need ever arose."

"Well, maybe you're leaning on the first one, Granny," I said.

On weekdays, we ate our meals in the kitchen. On the Sabbath, we ate dinner in the dining room, and Mother set the table with china and silver. We weren't rich, but Granny's mother had been rich enough for china and silver. On weekdays, we ate with plainware.

Although there were only five of us in the immediate family, our table was always set with places for six, Mother at one end, Father at the other, Granny facing the two boys. The empty chair was next to Granny. My father claimed that the empty chair was, as he put it, a manifesto of hospitality, an invitation to anyone who crossed our threshold at mealtime; and I must admit that many a guest sat there, knowing that the welcome was ready at the Coopers', the food good and the cooking beyond compare. But my father's real purpose was an audience, and if possible an argument. There wasn't anyone in his own family whom he considered really worth arguing with, and as far as plain discourse was concerned, although we were a disciplined and trained audience, he could never be wholly sure that we were listening, and if listening, comprehending.

My own opinion was that Granny could win hands down in any argument, but she would not argue with her son in front of his own children. She also felt that one of her sex tended to be unladylike and pushy when she ventured on the finer points of the divine, ordinary, and inherent rights of man—which was mainly the subject.

Tonight, however, we had no guest at the beginning of the meal, and the five of us sat down and four of us bent our heads while Father said grace. He didn't hold with bending his head, at grace or any other time, and when Granny once raised this point with him, he replied that one of the many differences between ourselves and Papists and High Church people—who were a shade worse than Papists—was that whereas the latter two sects cringed and groveled before the clay and plaster images they worshiped, we stood face to face with our God, as befitting what He had created in His own image. Granny said that there was possibly some difference between cringing and groveling and a polite bending of the head from the neck, but Father wasn't moved. The difference was quantitative not qualitative, and therefore only a matter of degree. To him it was a principle. In two minutes, my father could lead any argument or discussion around to being a principle.

So he said grace glaring across the table at the imaginary point where he placed God, and I always felt that God had the worst of it. My father couldn't just begin a meal with something direct and ordinary, like "Thank Thee, O Lord, for Thy daily bread and the fruit of the harvest." Oh, no—no, he had to embellish it. If there was no guest at the meal, God was always present, and tonight my father said sternly:

"We thank thee, O Lord, for the bread we eat, but we are also conscious of seed we have planted, of the hands that guided the plow and the back bent in toil. The ground is dry as dust, and I will take the liberty of asking for a little rain. I know that Thou givest with one hand and Thou takest away with the other, but sometimes it seems to me to go beyond the bounds of reason. Amen!"

Then he turned to his soup. Granny lifted her head and stared at him, and finally said, "Moses?"

"Yes, Mother?"

She sighed, and we all began to eat.

"Yes, Mother?"

"Nothing," Granny said. "Nothing at all."

"Whatever is on your mind, Mother, I would appreciate your coming out with it and saying it."

"Eat your soup, Moses," she sighed.

He was inordinately fond of soup, and during the soup he left conversation to the women and children. I did not have much to say to Levi, being occupied with my own thoughts, some of them about Ruth Simmons and also some thoughts about going to sea. If you had respectable kin in Boston, it was generally understood that one of the younger sons would go to sea and learn the trade, since there was no better way to end up with a fine house and a wife in silks and laces, and good, imported furniture as well as some standing in the community. I was not a younger son, but one day in Boston, Captain Ishmael Jamison, my uncle on my mother's side, had felt my muscles, asked me a number of questions, and finished by wondering how I would like to sign on with him as bottom junior on a voyage to the Indies. I was remembering this, contemplating it, and speculating on whether there weren't more interesting girls in the world than Ruth Simmons, whom I had seen at least every day of my life. I also kept in back of my mind a picture of my father's rage if I came out with so much as a hint about going to sea.

The bloody confrontation at the Massachusetts towns of Lexington and Concord that precipitated the American Revolution, as seen through the experiences of one family.

Release Date: April 24, 1988

Release Time: 100 minutes

Director: Delbert Mann

Cast:

Tommy Lee Jones as Moses Cooper

Susan Blakely as Sarah Cooper

Chad Lowe as Adam Cooper

Robert Urich as Joseph Simmons

Meredith Salenger as Ruth Simmons

Rip Torn as Solomon Chandler

Joan Heney as Granny Cooper

Nicholas Kilbertus as John Parker

Griffith Brewer as Samuel Hadley

Thor Bishopric as Jonathan Harrington

Joel Miller as The Reverend

Brian Furlong as Joash Smith

Anthony Ulc as Simon Casper (as Tony Ulc)

Philip Spensley as John Buckman

Peter Colvey as Major John Pitcairn

Alan Mozes as Young British Soldier

Jeannie Walker as Mrs. Simmons

Gary Plaxton as Lt. Col. Francis Smith

Jon Baggaley as Metcalf (as John Baggaley)

Vlasta Vrana as Paul Revere

Burke Lawrence as Rider on Concord Road

Paul Rutledge as Lt. Sutherland

Ken Siegel as Enseign de Berniere

David Gow as Men at Akins Farm

Tedd Dillon as Men at Akins Farm (as Teddy Lee Dillon)

James Coull as Captain Parson

Timothy Hine as British Soldier

Vincent Glorioso as Lt. Baker

Awards:

1988 Emmys

Outstanding Achievement in Music Composition for a Miniseries or Special (Dramatic Underscore) - Allyn Ferguson - Nominated

Author Bio:

Howard Fast (1914–2003) was one of the most prolific American writers of the twentieth century. He was a bestselling author of more than eighty works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and screenplays. The son of immigrants, Fast grew up in New York City and published his first novel upon finishing high school in 1933. In 1950, his refusal to provide the United States Congress with a list of possible Communist associates earned him a three-month prison sentence. During his incarceration, Fast wrote one of his best-known novels, Spartacus (1951). Throughout his long career, Fast matched his commitment to championing social justice in his writing with a deft, lively storytelling style.

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📘🎥Friday's Film Adaptation🎥📘: The Crossing by Howard Fast

Summary:
Nobody has written more passionately or more vividly about the American Revolution than Howard Fast. The legendary living author of Freedom Road and Citizen Tom Paine, the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of Spartacus and the triumphant survivor of Hollywood's notorious blacklist of the fifties, Howard Fast is a part of American history.

It is an amazing testament to Washington's leadership of the young volunteer army fighting in summer clothes against the bitter cold, the snow and the almost impassable Delaware River.

Criss-crossing through Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Connecticut and New York, this is also the tale of Colonel John Glover, the leader of a band of New England fishermen, of Tom Paine, the first American war correspondent; and the dreaded German Hessians themselves.

Dispelling the myths of history, Howard Fast has written an unforgettable and true account of a key event in America's struggle for independence that all Americans should know and understand.

CHAPTER 1
AT THE VERY BEGINNING, they did not think of themselves as soldiers. Most of them were deeply religious, with more of a feeling for life than for death. But in the twenty-four hours after the first meeting with the British regulars on Lexington Common, they got over their fear and they learned how to kill. Between the town of Concord in Massachusetts and Boston in Massachusetts, they tore a whole British army into shreds, sent it running back to Boston screaming in its pain; and it was then that their attitudes changed and they became cocky and contemptuous of every kind of British or European soldier.

From all over New England, from Vermont and New Hampshire and Maine and Massachusetts and Connecticut and Rhode Island, and from the midlands, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and even from Virginia and other places in the South, the people converged on Boston, where a British army was cornered with only a way out by sea. There were Minutemen and Committeemen and Militiamen and musketeers and riflemen and pikemen off the fishing boats, youngsters, and grown men, all of them pouring into the Boston area, and at Bunker Hill they defeated the British again.

At Bunker Hill, they entrenched themselves and built earthworks, and the British marched full and flat against them, expecting them to panic and run away. But instead of fleeing, the Americans opened a deadly fire. The Americans gave way finally before the British, but they took a toll of almost a thousand of the enemy in dead and wounded.

And all this filled them with confidence and with contempt for their enemies, for men who "fight for hire."

A year later, having marched down from Boston to New York City, with a tall, skinny, long-nosed Virginian, George Washington, as their new commander in chief, they were more confident than ever. In all their lives and dreams they had never seen so many men together in one place as there were in New York on the ninth of July in 1776, when they were drawn up in their brigades to hear a public reading of the Declaration of Independence, written by a young man, Thomas Jefferson, and signed by the members of the Continental Congress. On that day, by actual count, there were 20,275 of them, tall, long-legged healthy lads, half of them under eighteen years old, and most of them cocky beyond belief.

The very number of them fed this feeling of security and superiority over the enemy, and every day additional groups of young volunteers, hot for freedom and full of pride, entered their camp. It was true that against them, Sir William Howe, the commander of the British army, could muster thirty thousand men—but his home base was over three thousand miles away, while theirs was just around the corner or across the river or over yonder a bit.

Anyway, if General Howe was foolish enough to attack them, they'd give him back his own coin in full measure. Most of the young men in the American army were farmers. Their fathers had let them go off after the planting but told them they were to get back for the harvest or get their necks wrung.

They could just look around at the army that was assembled here to know that it would all be over and done with long before harvest time.

CHAPTER 2
THERE WERE FEW SECRETS in that curious war. There appears to have been a whole army of spies who would sell any bit of information to any buyer, and when Sir William Howe decided that he would land half of his army—fifteen thousand men—on the Brooklyn shore to take Long Island and perhaps cut off the Americans on Manhattan Island, the news soon got to Washington. He sat down to consult with his staff, among whom there was one officer, General Charles Lee, who was trained in the British army and of whom we will hear a good deal. Charles Lee was of the opinion that the British were stupid and rigid, and that they would go on repeating all the tactics that had led them to previous disaster. If the Americans made a show of force, the British would confront the rebels and attempt to brush them away.

Unfortunately, the great majority of General Washington's staff agreed with Lee. They were most of them bright, exuberant young men who felt that the one important problem was to get the British to fight, so that they might whip the daylights out of them.

The commander in chief was less young and exuberant than some of the others, but modest and unwilling to press his opinions or put himself forward as a military genius. He preferred to sit quietly in his beautiful buff-and-blue uniform, which had been tailored for his position as commander in the Virginia Militia and which was so admired that every officer who had the price had given orders to his own tailor to make him one of the same. After he had listened enough, it appeared to him that the counsel of these bright and articulate young officers made very good sense.

Thereupon, he worked out a scheme that might end the affair of the Revolution properly and quickly. He took eight thousand of his very best men, almost half of them riflemen and excellent marksmen, and had them ferried across the East River to Brooklyn. Their transportation across the river was contrived by a regiment of Massachusetts fishermen and sailors, who were under the command of Colonel John Glover; and once they were on the Brooklyn side, Washington had them take up positions on the high hill of Brooklyn Heights and there build earthwork barriers and trenches.

The reasoning behind this was very simple. The Americans would display indifference as to where the British landed on the Brooklyn shore. Actually, it did not matter where they landed, because wherever they came they would face the problem of the American position on Brooklyn Heights and the necessity to sweep it away before they could be secure in Brooklyn and ready to cut off the Americans in Manhattan. Thus, their landing would be unopposed. The British would step on shore, form their men in regiments and then march against the American position, and from behind their earthworks, the American riflemen would cut them down as they had at Bunker Hill.

However, Washington felt that there was a very real possibility that the landing in Brooklyn—so poorly kept secret—was no more than a diversion, and that the rest of the British forces would be directed against New York itself, perhaps in small boats from the great British ships of the line. Because it appeared so eminently sensible a course for his enemies to pursue, Washington kept the bulk of his artillery in New York, and his troops there on an even more intense alert than those in Brooklyn.

On August 22nd, fifteen thousand British and Hessian soldiers were landed at Gravesend Bay on the Brooklyn shore just south of the Narrows. Old Israel Putnam, a brave but rather simplistic soul, conceived of the astonishing notion of sending strong bodies of riflemen to take up positions in the woods facing the landing area. As the British advanced, the riflemen would shoot down the first ranks of the British and then retreat, leading the British army into the trap that awaited them on Brooklyn Heights.

And then the British refused to do any of the things that the Americans had planned for them. When the riflemen had taken up their positions in the woods, facing the main roads, the Hessians advanced on the double along little-used footpaths and cut off the riflemen, attacking them from the rear. Instead of wasting themselves in a frontal attack on the fortified positions on Brooklyn Heights, the British and Hessians concentrated on the slaughter and capture of the several thousand riflemen that had been sent out of the fortifications to intercept them.

Taken from behind, the riflemen—undisciplined at best—reacted in panic. They twisted around to fire at anything that moved and in many cases at their own comrades. Southerners and Pennsylvania woodsmen, their training was in the hunting of squirrel and deer, not men. Their long Pennsylvania rifles were difficult to load. The bullet had to be jammed down the long length of the barrel of the gun. And with those riflemen who preened themselves on an extra-long range and accurate weapon, the bullet actually had to be hammered into the barrel so that the inner screw literally threaded the soft lead.

Suddenly, their long, beautifully wrought rifles were worthless. In the fierce onslaught of the Hessian troops, there was not even time for the Americans to begin to load. If they turned to run away, the Hessians bayonetted them through the back. If they tried to club their long, unwieldly rifles and fight back, the Hessians drove in low and bayonetted them in the belly. In the thick woods, hand to hand, there was no more useless, more impossible weapon than the long Pennsylvania rifle.

The Americans threw down their guns and tried to surrender, but the Hessians would not let them. They and the British regiments had the smell of blood, and they killed until sheer exhaustion put an end to it. The screams of pain and terror from the dying Americans were so loud and awful that finally the blood-crazed English and Hessian officers came to their senses and stopped the slaughter and began the taking of prisoners.

But in the woods where the riflemen were trapped lay over six hundred American corpses unburied, unclaimed; how many exactly no one knows, for many of the riflemen were not on any official regimental roster, and for years afterward the place was known as the "wood of horror." Travelers spoke of the dreadful stink that emanated from the woods, and a whole mythology of ghostly terror tales arose concerning that bloody battlefield.

As far as the entrenchments on Brooklyn Heights were concerned, there too the British refused to behave as the Americans had decided that they would. Instead of launching a frontal attack upon the Americans, they began to unload the big guns from the ships of the line, so that they might blow the American position to pieces.

General Washington did not wait for this to happen. Shattered by the defeat, hundreds of his men and officers dead, hundreds more wounded and a great part of his Brooklyn army in the hands of the British as prisoners of war, he immediately ordered Colonel Glover to bring the men back to Manhattan. A strong wind from the north kept the British warships out of the East River, and if the military exercise in Brooklyn was wanting, the retreat was masterly. It was the first retreat from a lost battlefield by a man who would soon be known sardonically as the great master of military retreat.

CHAPTER 3
THE COCKINESS PASSED, and a new mood, fear, pervaded the Americans. There were eyewitness stories, some of them invented and some of them real, and they were of three types. In one, the Hessian skewered the Yankee to a tree, and there he hung like a bug pinned on a board, the bayonet through his chest, screaming while he died. In the second, the Hessian stuck the Yankee lad through the genitals and drove the bayonet up into his guts, and in the third story, the Hessian stabbed the fleeing Yankee in the back. All three were sufficiently terrifying. A German regiment of farmboys from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, had taken to calling the Hessians "Die Jäger der Hölle" (the foresters from hell), even though there was only one Jäger regiment among the many Hessian regiments that fought the Americans in Brooklyn. The Hessians were as good as any soldiers in Europe. But now they were magnified out of all proportion to reality and turned into objects of consuming terror.

A crack Rhode Island rifle regiment of two hundred men disappeared one night, and then during the following few days, over four thousand Massachusetts and Connecticut men deserted and disappeared from the camp. It was a panic so uncontrollable that for a few days, General Washington came to believe that his army was beyond hope or redemption. A whole regiment of riflemen from South Carolina, who had grumbled incessantly that the war would be over before they saw an Englishman in the sights of their rifles, picked up and marched out of camp, north to a ferry across the Hudson and then back home. Even the threat of cannon facing them did not stop them, and young Henry Knox, in command of the artillery, lacked the stomach to give an order for Americans to fire on Americans.

The plain truth was that the morale of the riflemen had been shattered. It was almost impossible to fix a bayonet onto the end of one of the long, slender Pennsylvania rifles—certainly beyond the skill of the metalworkers available in New York—and without a bayonet, these soldiers lacked the will to face the enemy. Washington had looked upon his thousands of riflemen as a sort of secret weapon, superb marksmen who would cut down the redcoats before the attacking British could ever approach to bayonet distance. But the reality had proved quite different. The tall, swaggering, buckskin-clad bullies, with their fringed shirts and their carved powderhorns, were beyond training. They drank too much, quarreled incessantly and looked upon any sort of discipline as a direct threat to their honor, as they put it. Loudmouthed, foul-tongued as many of them were, they posed a constant threat to the entire structure of the new army. After the slaughter on Brooklyn Heights, they boasted no longer. Within two weeks, half of the riflemen had deserted, fleeing the camp by night for the most part—nor were they ever again to be a decisive factor in the American Revolution, although some regiments, the Bennington Rifles of Vermont and a number of Pennsylvania and Virginia regiments, performed bravely throughout the war.

CHAPTER 4
IN THE COLD, bitter reality of defeat and death, an army was born, and this is the story of their borning and of the agony that went with it—and how awful in those birth pangs was the realization of what war is and what happens to men who fight. Most of the army was very young, but in the weeks that followed the 22nd of August in 1776, their youth passed away. They became old with the aging that only the intimate knowledge of death brings. They learned that when a soldier retreats before an invader in his own land, he leaves a little bit of himself behind every step of the way. His retreat is thus limited and conditioned by death, and it has a point of no return.

In our story, this point was the Delaware River, the natural boundary between the two rich colonies of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and it is this river that is specific in the crossing; and ours is the story of how the skinny fox hunter from Virginia and his frightened men crossed it twice.

CHAPTER 5
A WORD MUST BE SAID here about the table of organization of this Army of the Revolution led by Washington. Beginning at the bottom, there were the companies, and they were put together in a dozen different ways. Many of them were of Minutemen or Committeemen, who had been drilling on their village greens for months before the hostilities started. The drilling was fun and socially pleasant, but it did not make them into soldiers. Others were religious companies: Methodists or Presbyterians or Baptists. There were fewer of these. Then there were the lodges, Masonic companies, fellowship companies, trade companies such as fuller and cooper and ropewalker and bookbinder and many others, and then the class companies of rich men and their youngsters in beautiful tailored uniforms and, of course, there were the regular militia companies for defense against the red men and bandits and outlaws.

A number of companies, geographically connected, as in town or county or colony, were logged together as regiments. Most of the companies were commanded by captains, who were usually assisted by one or two or five lieutenants. The number of lieutenants depended upon the size of the company—from forty to a hundred men at the beginning—and also upon how many young officers could afford saddle horses and tailored uniforms. The regiment—and all of this applies only to the first months of the war—would consist of from two to ten companies. It was commanded by a colonel, a man whose command derived from prior military experience, or from his wealth, or from his position in the community or from his education, for these were a people dedicated to education and deeply impressed by it.

Two or five or ten regiments—again depending upon size—would be logged together as a brigade, and this would be under the command of a brigadier or brigadier general. These general officers who commanded the brigades of General Washington's army were as unusual a group of men as this continent ever saw associated in a single effort—doctors, lawyers, merchants, college professors, teachers, professional soldiers who had left the British army to fight with the Americans, planters, builders, saintly men, drunkards, scoundrels, cheats, liars—but in their great majority men of high purpose and integrity. In other words, they were precisely the kind of collection of men such a situation as the American Revolution would produce.

Over the brigadiers was the commander in chief, who was directly responsible to the Congress of the Colonies.

A dramatization of George Washington's perilous gamble of crossing the Delaware River and attacking the British forces at Trenton.

Release Date: January 10, 2000 (A&E Channel US)
Running time: 89 min.

Cast:
Jeff Daniels as Gen. George Washington
Roger Rees as Gen. Hugh Mercer
Sebastian Roché as Col. John Glover
Steven McCarthy as Alexander Hamilton
John Henry Canavan as Gen. Henry Knox
Ned Vukovic as William Alexander, Lord Stirling
David Ferry as Gen. Nathaniel Greene
Nigel Bennett as Gen. Horatio Gates
Karl Pruner as Gen. John Sullivan
Duncan McLeod as Williams
Andrew Kraulis as Billy
Kelly Harms as Tommy
Jonathan Watton as Cadman
Kris Holden-Ried as Capt. Heineman
Julian Richings as McKenzie

Author Bio:
Howard Fast (1914–2003) was one of the most prolific American writers of the twentieth century. He was a bestselling author of more than eighty works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and screenplays. The son of immigrants, Fast grew up in New York City and published his first novel upon finishing high school in 1933. In 1950, his refusal to provide the United States Congress with a list of possible Communist associates earned him a three-month prison sentence. During his incarceration, Fast wrote one of his best-known novels, Spartacus (1951). Throughout his long career, Fast matched his commitment to championing social justice in his writing with a deft, lively storytelling style.

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