Posted on 01/10/2010 12:08:49 PM PST by Pharmboy
From Hollywood to the history shelf, the Civil War was a widescreen epic, while the American Revolution has too often been a footnote. One of the most important battles of the Revolution happened in what is now Greensboro on March 15, 1781, but, over the past century, Americans have treated that war as an afterthought.
The Civil War was "Gone with the Wind," "Glory" and 11 hours by Ken Burns. The Revolution, by contrast, was little more than a few forgettable movies, an occasional special on The History Channel and a handful of books (or more often booklets) sold at battleground visitors' centers.
When Hollywood finally tried to catch up by making a true Revolutionary War epic in 2000, it failed miserably with "The Patriot," a movie dense with such cringe-inducing dialogue as, "It's a free country ... or at least it will be." The movie portrays British officers as sadistic proto-Nazis, and the climactic battle -- based loosely on Guilford Courthouse -- is a gruesome cartoon. The reluctant warrior portrayed by Mel Gibson ends up in a mano a mano grudge match with The Thing That Wouldn't Die, a British officer loosely based on cavalry commander Banastre Tarleton, but depicted on screen as something closer to the Terminator.
The real Tarleton was quite human -- he lost two fingers when he fought here, one of many details about the battle I learned from reading "Long, Obstinate, and Bloody: The Battle of Guilford Courthouse" by Lawrence E. Babits and Joshua B. Howard. The book occasionally gets bogged down in thickets of detail as dense as some of the woods the soldiers fought through that late-winter afternoon in 1781. But for the most part it's a compelling read, and the first full-length book devoted exclusively to the battle that proved a Pyrrhic victory for Lord Cornwallis and the British army.
The authors present the book as a sequel to Babits' 1997 "A Devil of a Whipping," about the Battle of Cowpens in South Carolina, which preceded Guilford Courthouse by two months. Babits is a professor at East Carolina University, and his collaborator on the sequel and one previous Revolutionary War book, Howard, is a research historian for the state of North Carolina. Another state historian, Mark A. Moore, created clear, detailed battle maps. The book also includes a series of modern paintings by Don Troiani that show vividly the uniforms of different types of soldiers who fought in the battle.
As a longtime Civil War buff, it took me a while to find a compelling entry point to the Revolutionary War. The real turning point was discovering the work of David Hackett Fischer, whose "Paul Revere's Ride" taught me that everything I knew about the Revolution was wrong -- and that the truth was a lot more interesting and complex than the legend.
I also appreciate the efforts of my father, Dick Huffman, who did a lot of genealogical research before he died in 2003. At the beginning of this decade, he told me that one of our ancestors -- my great-great-great-great-great grandfather, Christian Hoffmann Jr. -- fought at Guilford Courthouse, along with his brother, John.
My ancestor doesn't rate a mention in "Long, Obstinate, and Bloody," but I wouldn't have been surprised to find him in the book. Babits and Howard give interesting details about dozens of people involved in the battle, including a local volunteer who helped Gen. Nathanael Greene pick the best places to set up his cannons.
Unlike some of their predecessors, the authors took care not to rely on memoirs written many years after the battle by bitter veterans with axes to grind, such as Tarleton and his American counterpart, cavalry commander Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee, father of legendary Confederate General Robert E. Lee. They get great details from unexpected sources, such as the journal of Virginian Samuel Houston, who had a bird's-eye view of the beginning of the battle from a tree he climbed along the American second line.
Wherever possible, Babits and Howard rely on letters and reports written closer to the action, and they also lean heavily on reports written after the war by veterans applying for government pensions. In many ways, their book is an expansion of an outstanding 1997 work they cite in their preface and elsewhere, John Buchanan's "The Road to Guilford Courthouse," a richly detailed, meticulously researched look at the war in the South in 1780 and 1781.
But where Buchanan's book devotes only 11 pages to Guilford Courthouse, "Long, Obstinate, and Bloody" devotes 69 pages to the battle proper, and many more to the skirmishes near present-day Guilford College the morning of the battle. If the endless detail in the preliminary chapter "Greene's Army" feels a bit like the first chapter of Matthew in the New Testament ("Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas ...."), the unflinching accounts of the battle itself make up for the excessive scene setting.
A gruesome description of a soldier getting his spine ripped away by a cannonball concludes the battle's preliminaries, and the book provides many details I don't recall learning from any other source, such as a fire that killed a number of wounded soldiers.
The biggest surprise in the book comes when the authors debunk one of the battle's most enduring legends, that Cornwallis -- over the protests of Brig. Gen. Charles O'Hara -- preserved the victory by having his artillery fire into a melee that included his own troops. Babits and Howard make a convincing argument that the legend came primarily from Lee's memoir and has little basis in reality: "The image of a draconian Cornwallis ordering his guns to cut down his own elite Guards over the pleas of his courageous, wounded subordinate became legendary in the annals of Guilford Courthouse, despite the fact that neither Cornwallis nor O'Hara, nor for that matter any actual participant in the event, actually recorded it taking place."
The legends live on in the Triad, though now with more historical accuracy thanks to the hard work of Babits and Howard. "Long, Obstinate, and Bloody" is another step forward in giving the Revolutionary War its due.
Contact Eddie Huffman at ehuffman@triad.rr.com
Sorry I said “C’mon man” before...you’re a woman!
The trouble with Northwest Passage is that it is a book by Kenneth Roberts, popular mid century historical writer, whose Arundel trilogy had Benedict Arnold as its hero. Another novel Oliver Wiswell had a Tory as its central character.
Thanks for posting.
Apparently the custom of naming towns (Blank) Courthouse was a Southern thing.
But there’s one in New Jersey:
http://capemay.com/magazine/2002/11/the-town-named-after-a-building/
Sullivan’s 1779 campaign against the Iroquois was a result of almost two years of war in the Mohawk Valley. And the Defeat of St. Leger was largely due to the loss of a large force of Iroquois after the Battle of Oriskany [where the Oneida and Tuscarora fought for us].
The practice in NC sprung from a requirement to place the administrative and legal functions of any given county with the convenience of all that particular county’s residence in mind. This led to the establishment of courthouse towns in the geographic center of the county. Oftentimes, there was no town there at all, and so one was established for that express purpose.
For instance, when nearby Surry County, NC was divided due to population growth in 1789, and Stokes County was then formed from the eastern half, there was a survey conducted to locate the geographic center of the county, and it was found to be in the vicinity of my fifth great grandfather’s land. His name was Johann Michael Frey.
What was described as “a great cyclone” came up along about that time, probably a tornado, destroying several government buildings at the former courthouse at Richmond in Surry County. Debris landed on Frey’s land, this was determined to be a sign from God, and the surrounding 23 acres were purchased for the new county seat.
This new town did not have “Courthouse” in it’s name as many such new courthouse towns did. It was named Germanton for the many German speaking people of the new county, primarily Moravians in Salem, Bethania, Bethabara, Friedburg, etcetera, who resided in the jurisdiction.
It’s no longer the courthouse town. Stokes was divided itself, and two new county seats were created, again near the geographic center for the convenience of all the people of the jurisdicion. Danbury, for the county that retained the name, and Winston, in honor of Revolutionary War Col. Joseph Winston of Germanton.
Joseph Winston was a neighbor of my direct paternal 4G who fought in the Revolution, mentioned above. Winston’s grave was moved to Guilford Courthouse from Germanton, where it remains.
My point is these movies hardly spend any time really looking at the war; much less the part of regular enlisted men.
Freehold was Monmouth Courthouse - near which the “Battle of ‘Monmouth’” occurred in NJ.
Thanks for a clear explanation.
(Probably fits Appomattox Courthouse and others in Virginia.)
It is pretty close to the geographic center.
Great stuff...thanks to the both of you for your contributions to this thread.
Glad to participate. Thank you for posting this.
By the way, it seems we made it all the way through without posting an actual link to Guilford Courthouse National Military Park:
http://www.nps.gov/guco/index.htm
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