Major General Richard Montgomery: The Making of an American Hero (review)

This volume is the second full-length biography of Richard Montgomery (1738-75) to appear in the last decade. The first, by Hal T. Shelton, was published in 1994 and represents a thorough analysis of Montgomery's British and rebel military careers, which ended tragically but heroically with his death at the walls of Quebec on 31 December 1775. Gabriel claims to have added significant new detail to Shelton's well-told presentation, including more about Montgomery's early years in Ireland, his service during and after the Seven Years' War as a company-grade officer in the British 17th Regiment of Foot, and his personal life after migrating to America in 1772 and marrying into New York's powerful Livingston family. The author also includes a section on Montgomery's image as a martyred hero in the years following the Revolution. Characterized by succeeding generations as a Revolutionary era Cincinnatus who put aside his plough and went off to war in defense of sacred ideals, Montgomery would stand as a noble symbol of selfless sacrifice before being relegated to the dustbin of history after a new group of martyred military heroes came into being as a result of the Civil War.

Gabriel's text is well-organized and well-written. He claims to have reviewed sources that other historians, such as Shelton, apparently did not investigate. These sources, however, seem to be lacking in new revelations, since they do not change in any consequential way the fundamentals of Montgomery's story. Once Gabriel gets Montgomery to America, the focal point of his book is on his subject's marriage to Janet Livingston and service to the Revolutionary cause, first in attending a provincial congress in New York and then as a brigadier general in the fledgling Continental army.

Gabriel follows Montgomery's correspondence closely in retelling the story of the rebel invasion of Quebec Province in the summer and fall of 1775. He ably describes his subject's exasperation with his independent-minded patriot troops as well as Montgomery's oft-repeated desire to return home to Janet and be done with the mess of making war with so unprofessional a military force. If there is a shortcoming here, it is in Gabriel's overall conceptualization of the patriot campaign to bring Canada into the Revolution, in which he pays little attention to the second invasion force marching through the Maine wilderness under Benedict Arnold's command. Without the presence of Arnold's detachment and the false sensation of strength that this force conveyed, it is unlikely that Montgomery would have tried to storm and capture the walled city of Quebec. Had he not done so, he might well have made it home to his beloved Janet or, perhaps, he might have stayed in the army and achieved exalted martial glory for brilliant leadership as a Continental general officer.

Life, however, ended brutally for Montgomery early on the last day of 1775. That he is now the subject of two worthy scholarly biographies means that his story has been fully recovered from the historical dustbin into which he had fallen. Whether one prefers Gabriel's or Shelton's version, there can be no doubt that Montgomery's is a story fully worthy of the retelling.