Posted on 07/08/2007 7:39:21 AM PDT by Pharmboy
In the popular mind, the American Revolution was mostly about liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- and the war that followed the Declaration of Independence wasn't much of a war. We imagine toy soldiers in red coats chasing picturesque rebels.
Actually, the War of Independence was horrific, according to John Ferling, a leading historian of early America. It was a grinding conflict that rivaled, and in some ways exceeded, the Civil War in its toll on American fighters when looked at on a per-capita basis. Ferling chronicles the suffering in his new book, "Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence" (Oxford University Press).
"There's a sense that there was a great deal of gallantry," Ferling told me, "and the Revolution was a war unlike modern wars." Not so.
Ferling offers a gritty, boots-on-the-ground account of a war that subsequent generations had melted into a patriotic story suitable for children. The reality was that combatants on all sides committed atrocities and the body count turned ghastly.
One in four men who served in the Continental Army lost his life, a higher percentage death toll than in the Civil War, where one regular in five perished. In World War II, one in 40 American servicemen died.
Almost half the American rebels taken prisoner died, mainly from disease and malnutrition. The mortality rate among Union soldiers held at the infamous Andersonville POW camp in Georgia was a far lower 37 percent.
Ferling challenges other misconceptions about the period. One is that the War of Independence came upon a previously peaceful land.
By 1754, Virginia had already fought five wars against the Indians. In the North, the Puritans and their descendents had fought six wars. (Some of them involved European powers vying for the control of America.) Before sailing for America, settlers would hear sermons warning them to prepare for war.
In these earlier hostilities, Ferling writes, the colonists "not infrequently adopted terror tactics that included torture; killing women, children, and the elderly; the destruction of Indian villages and food supplies; and summary executions of prisoners or their sale into slavery in faraway lands." English soldiers would refer to such methods as the "American way of war."
Another flawed impression is that the War of Independence was an overwhelmingly Northern phenomenon. (Before World War II, most of the historians writing about the Revolution came from the Northeast.) Ferling, who grew up in Texas City, Texas, devotes about half the book to the war in the South, where the rivalries were perhaps the most brutal.
"The only real instances of guerilla warfare are in the South," Ferling notes. After the British took Charleston in 1780, the Carolina backcountry erupted into a civil war. At King's Mountain, rebels massacred loyalists -- and the carnage was such that a shocked Virginia colonel asked his officers "to restrain the disorderly manner of slaughtering . . . the prisoners."
In trying to find a winning strategy, British officers and American loyalists entered familiar debates on whether they should terrify the rebels or try to win their hearts and minds. A Pennsylvania Tory named Joseph Galloway urged Britain to drop its "romantic sentiments" in dealing with Washington's army and to turn the redcoat into a "soldier-executioner."
But others worried that excessive cruelty would hurt efforts to bring colonists back into the fold after Britain's expected victory. British General Henry Clinton, for example, said it was necessary "to gain the hearts and subdue the minds of America."
"Almost a Miracle" provides a needed corrective to the idea that the fighting unleashed by the fine words of July 4, 1776, was mild by modern standards. The War of Independence, it turns out, was no cakewalk.
Froma Harrop writes for the Providence Journal. Her column is distributed by Creators Syndicate, 5777 W. Century, Suite 700, Los Angeles, CA 90045. Reach her at fharrop@projo.com.
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"When I looked at the subtyping of mine I was hoping to find that I was a Niall of the Nine descendant, but I was three loci off."
I'm R1b too and I'm four loci off.
I expect there's a time in our near future we'll be describing ourselves in this manner. For example, blam (R1b), Smith (R1a) and etc.
BTW, it is my opinion that when the R1's and R2's split ways, the R1's turned toward Europe and the R2's headed toward Asia and possibly became the Jomon-Ainu groups.
So, how does one go about getting tested?
Go here and sign up. Your mtDNA(female) and Y-Chromosome DNA(male) will cost $107.50 each.
Considering that US population then was about 1% of what it is today, that would be about 1.1 million today. That's a far greater comparative toll than the Iraq War, for instance, which is why the press today NEVER prints such comparisons. Still, it is slight, comparatively to the Civil War, and WW I and II.
Congressman Billybob
Well, I don’t know what his agenda is (or even if he has one), but he seems to be an iconoclast, and that’s ok with me. However, if his criticism comes from the left, I will ignore him. We’ll see...
Big fights around here in the Carolinas during the Rev War.
Bunch of fights around Fayetteville over salt, used for pay and food preservation..
And my numbers for the RevWar go something like this:
KIA: 6,245
Died as a POW: 11.000+ (11k is the number given for those that died just on the Brit prison ships in Wallabout Bay off the East River in NYC).
Almost a Miracle:
The American Victory
in the
War of Independence
by John Ferling
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Ferling challenges other misconceptions about the period. One is that the War of Independence came upon a previously peaceful land.
Comments like yours keep me posting.
ping. Very interesting. Thanks
That's what I thought too.
I recall reading the population was about evenly split into thirds. One third Patriots, one third Tories, one third just hanging loose to see who would win.
I looked at some of your past posts. I like that you take an interest in the founders of this country, like your top ten list. You have knowledge of these men. What do you dislike about Jefferson?
Washingtton had inside information aout this and confronted Jefferson about it; TJ denied and lied, and Washington never spoke to him again.
If The General felt that way about him, that's good enough for me...
That’s why he’s called william Jefferson clinton.
Yet there are many more examples -- the "neutral" ground in North-eastern Jersey was a rough area of guerilla night raids -- many a good patriot family in that area lost its men to the prison ships in NY harbor, were men were fed food the dogs didn't eat.
Are we counting engagements at sea, off the shore or in the harbors? If so, I think NJ would win.
The reason the north gets more press is because it’s the North.
Since the CW in particular, New England Yankees have been pretty much controlling what is American “culture” (Thanksgiving, anyone? even if they were common in the day) and history.
NEers love to paint themselves as the starters of the war - which is true, but it’s about all they did. The way Ted Kennedy’s MA compatriots act, the entire war was in MA. Actually, after leaving Boston after a year, the war never fully returned there. There was a fight in Newport RI, but most of the major fighting became a NY-PA thing, Arnold’s return home notwithstanding.
Yes, Washington’s part in it had a lot to do with it. But I still think it’s because culture has focused heavily on New England. People have been taught it’s NE-this and NE-that, and before long people think NE did it all, both staging battles and fighting men. Look how New Jersey finally put on a campaign that they’re the “crossroads of the Rev”; before that noone was really aware how much happened with NJ.
And if you stick to NE, indeed, the war will seem short and easy. Because nothing much happened there.
From 1765 through 1770, NYC was the focus of rebellious thought and action(mainly because they were hit hard economically by the Brit pullout after the French and Indian War ended in '63), remember: the Stamp ACt Congress was there.
After 1770, the rebellion shifted to Boston and they certainly drove it. Once the Brits left the area when the cannons on Dorchester Heights were pointed at their fleet, the RevWar left MA as well.
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