Though the Continental Army had narrowly survived the early years of the Revolutionary War, it would take George Washington’s leadership to turn the tide, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Rick Atkinson said.

“Washington as commander in chief, he has an excellent eye for subordinate talent,” he said Dec. 2 during a Noon Report webinar hosted by the Association of the U.S. Army. “He sees a 25-year-old, overweight Boston bookseller named Henry Knox and somehow intuits this guy is going to be the father of American artillery. He sees a mid-30s lapsed Quaker from Rhode Island named Nathanael Greene, and somehow recognizes that Greene, second only to Washington, as the indispensable man in the Continental Army.”

Atkinson, the bestselling author of eight works of narrative military history who was a longtime reporter and senior editor at The Washington Post, is the author of The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780. It is the second volume of his Revolution trilogy.

Washington was considered “very durable” and “robust,” both of which were essential to his success as commander in chief as he led a fighting force that was plagued by typhus, smallpox and typhoid, Atkinson said.

Through his effective talent management, Washington tapped Baron Friedrich von Steuben to train the ragtag Continental Army. He taught “this unlettered Army pretty basic things—how to drill, how to maneuver, camp hygiene, all the things that are important for an Army to become professional,” Atkinson said.

As the war stretched on, Washington realized that failure was not an option, Atkinson said. “When you’re waging a counterinsurgency, you have to win, especially if you're fighting a war where you’ve had to travel a long distance. If you are the insurgents, you have to not lose,” he said. “Washington comes to see that, I think, probably two years into the war, that he's got to not lose.”

As the U.S. approaches 250 years since its founding, the nation should take pride in its “common heritage,” Atkinson said. “There should be a great sense of pride, regardless of whether your family came here 300 years ago or 10 years ago,” he said. “This tells us something about who we are, where we came from, what our forebears believed and what they were willing to die for. That’s the most profound question any people can ask themselves.”