To understand the personal costs of the war is to understand the importance of the American Revolution itself. Independence was simultaneously a tragedy and triumph. Accepting and appreciating this dichotomy is a responsibility that we should assume when thinking about the purpose of America’s past, the strength of its people, and the lessons from history we all must take into the future today.
In 1781, Nathanael Greene watched as his army retreated from yet another battlefield in Central North Carolina. A devastating loss by his predecessor seven months earlier brought the New Englander south as the Revolutionary War drifted towards a stalemate in the north. But after assuming command and orchestrating a series of remarkable and unexpected strategic victories in the Carolinas between October 1780 and March 1781, Greene’s small army of regulars and militia turned the tide of the entire war. Few expected that a former merchant from Rhode Island, an amateur who walked with a limp and started the war as a private in the militia, would become one of the Continental Army’s most accomplished generals. But that was both the fortune and nature of the American Revolution. Men could rise and achieve incredible things based on their abilities rather than their birth.
But the war that Greene oversaw in the south was fueled by blood feuds and clan warfare that were savage even by moral standards of the day. Patriots and Loyalists burned farms and murdered each other with a zeal that left virtually no person or community untouched. Even though Greene had served since 1775 and fought in battles where casualties ran into the thousands, the viciousness of southern partisans and the home guard shocked him. There were rules to war in the 18th century, but despite the efforts of aristocrats and professional soldiers on both sides to keep things gentlemanly, few southerners followed those rules as they settled personal vendettas under the cloak of revolution.
But the truth is that the inhumanity of the southern war was no worse than war anywhere else in the world. There was an unusual level of brutality endemic to the human condition during this period. Massacres, rapes, ambushes, enslavement, and the summary execution of prisoners, were common and accepted. On the battlefield, victory over one’s enemies was personal and required a closeness that was grotesquely intimate. And even though the weapons of the time seem archaic by today’s standards, they were incredibly destructive when implemented properly. Shooting someone with a musket or artillery piece produced decapitations, gaping wounds, traumatic amputations, and excruciatingly slow deaths from blood loss or infection. Bayonets, swords, scalping knives, and other edged weapons created their own set of horrors.
Then, of course, there was disease. The Revolutionary generation had the bad luck of starting a prolonged war just as one of the worst smallpox epidemics in history raged across the continent. That plague, along with typhoid, dysentery, and malaria ultimately killed more soldiers and civilians than the war itself. While Enlightenment thinking had displaced the belief that sickness and death were irreversible judgements handed down by God, medical care and healing practices were barely distinguishable from the Middle Ages. Bloodletting, blistering, and a belief that, “If it’s broken, cut it off,” were all considered good medicine.
Economically, the colonies were completely dependent on the mother country for legal trade and commerce, and even before the first shots were fired at Lexington and Concord, the loss of goods and hard currency from Great Britain produced scarcity, runaway inflation, and an economic depression that pushed families into destitution and starvation. Members of the Continental Army and their families were certainly not immune to this and many wives ended-up as camp followers who suffered the same miseries as their husbands serving in the ranks. Soldiers and officers often went months without pay or proper clothing. Food and medical supplies were so scarce thousands died of starvation and disease in camp.
These conditions defined a generation. There is a romantic myth about the Revolution that belies the high price people paid for the nation’s independence. The truth is that few revolutionaries emerged from the war without experiencing a deep personal loss of some sort. Loved ones were murdered, property and businesses were destroyed, and the civil society that existed for many before 1775 never returned. Families living on the frontier and in rural areas of the south faced a particularly bleak existence as Loyalist militias, criminal gangs, and Indians armed and supplied by the British, rampaged and pillaged. Reprisals by white colonists against the Indians devolved into little more than genocidal warfare that left thousands of men, women, and children dead.
Given these costs it’s easy to imagine that at least a few people at the time wondered whether independence was truly worth it. But the Revolutionary generation was born out of hard circumstances that reshaped an entire people. Unimaginable suffering had been part of everyday life in America since 1607. But people endured because no matter how many miseries lurked about, prospects for a colonist were still better than life as a commoner in Great Britain. For decades before the war, men and women throughout the colonies endured a terrifying voyage across the Atlantic, backbreaking labor, indentured servitude, economic risks, war, starvation, Indian attacks, and hundreds of other threats to their lives. Over time, colonial culture drove the King’s subject in America apart from their British cousins who, recognizing the growing difference, often used the term American as an insult. But as a new people emerged, that word became synonymous with a belief that a nation where government was granted limited sovereignty by the governed was worth the sacrifice.
To understand the personal costs of the war is to understand the importance of the Revolution itself. Independence was simultaneously a tragedy and triumph. Accepting and appreciating this dichotomy is a responsibility that we should assume when thinking about the purpose of America’s past, the strength of its people, and the lessons from history we all must take into the future today.
Too many Americans in today’s social media-driven society throw around the threat of “civil war” without fully appreciating what it would mean to themselves and their families. I would like to think that if they truly understood what it would be like if things devolved, they would shut their mouths and look for alternatives to the political and rhetorical vitriol. If they don’t, they can’t blame anyone but themselves when the horrors of war are visited upon their communities and families. It would be a nightmare that frankly, many would choose not to live through.
To understand the personal costs of the war is to understand the importance of the American Revolution itself. Independence was simultaneously a tragedy and triumph. Accepting and appreciating this dichotomy is a responsibility that we should assume when thinking about the purpose of America’s past, the strength of its people, and the lessons from history we all must take into the future today.
In 1781, Nathanael Greene watched as his army retreated from yet another battlefield in Central North Carolina. A devastating loss by his predecessor seven months earlier brought the New Englander south as the Revolutionary War drifted towards a stalemate in the north. But after assuming command and orchestrating a series of remarkable and unexpected strategic victories in the Carolinas between October 1780 and March 1781, Greene’s small army of regulars and militia turned the tide of the entire war. Few expected that a former merchant from Rhode Island, an amateur who walked with a limp and started the war as a private in the militia, would become one of the Continental Army’s most accomplished generals. But that was both the fortune and nature of the American Revolution. Men could rise and achieve incredible things based on their abilities rather than their birth.
But the war that Greene oversaw in the south was fueled by blood feuds and clan warfare that were savage even by moral standards of the day. Patriots and Loyalists burned farms and murdered each other with a zeal that left virtually no person or community untouched. Even though Greene had served since 1775 and fought in battles where casualties ran into the thousands, the viciousness of southern partisans and the home guard shocked him. There were rules to war in the 18th century, but despite the efforts of aristocrats and professional soldiers on both sides to keep things gentlemanly, few southerners followed those rules as they settled personal vendettas under the cloak of revolution.
But the truth is that the inhumanity of the southern war was no worse than war anywhere else in the world. There was an unusual level of brutality endemic to the human condition during this period. Massacres, rapes, ambushes, enslavement, and the summary execution of prisoners, were common and accepted. On the battlefield, victory over one’s enemies was personal and required a closeness that was grotesquely intimate. And even though the weapons of the time seem archaic by today’s standards, they were incredibly destructive when implemented properly. Shooting someone with a musket or artillery piece produced decapitations, gaping wounds, traumatic amputations, and excruciatingly slow deaths from blood loss or infection. Bayonets, swords, scalping knives, and other edged weapons created their own set of horrors.
Then, of course, there was disease. The Revolutionary generation had the bad luck of starting a prolonged war just as one of the worst smallpox epidemics in history raged across the continent. That plague, along with typhoid, dysentery, and malaria ultimately killed more soldiers and civilians than the war itself. While Enlightenment thinking had displaced the belief that sickness and death were irreversible judgements handed down by God, medical care and healing practices were barely distinguishable from the Middle Ages. Bloodletting, blistering, and a belief that, “If it’s broken, cut it off,” were all considered good medicine.
Economically, the colonies were completely dependent on the mother country for legal trade and commerce, and even before the first shots were fired at Lexington and Concord, the loss of goods and hard currency from Great Britain produced scarcity, runaway inflation, and an economic depression that pushed families into destitution and starvation. Members of the Continental Army and their families were certainly not immune to this and many wives ended-up as camp followers who suffered the same miseries as their husbands serving in the ranks. Soldiers and officers often went months without pay or proper clothing. Food and medical supplies were so scarce thousands died of starvation and disease in camp.
These conditions defined a generation. There is a romantic myth about the Revolution that belies the high price people paid for the nation’s independence. The truth is that few revolutionaries emerged from the war without experiencing a deep personal loss of some sort. Loved ones were murdered, property and businesses were destroyed, and the civil society that existed for many before 1775 never returned. Families living on the frontier and in rural areas of the south faced a particularly bleak existence as Loyalist militias, criminal gangs, and Indians armed and supplied by the British, rampaged and pillaged. Reprisals by white colonists against the Indians devolved into little more than genocidal warfare that left thousands of men, women, and children dead.
Given these costs it’s easy to imagine that at least a few people at the time wondered whether independence was truly worth it. But the Revolutionary generation was born out of hard circumstances that reshaped an entire people. Unimaginable suffering had been part of everyday life in America since 1607. But people endured because no matter how many miseries lurked about, prospects for a colonist were still better than life as a commoner in Great Britain. For decades before the war, men and women throughout the colonies endured a terrifying voyage across the Atlantic, backbreaking labor, indentured servitude, economic risks, war, starvation, Indian attacks, and hundreds of other threats to their lives. Over time, colonial culture drove the King’s subject in America apart from their British cousins who, recognizing the growing difference, often used the term American as an insult. But as a new people emerged, that word became synonymous with a belief that a nation where government was granted limited sovereignty by the governed was worth the sacrifice.
To understand the personal costs of the war is to understand the importance of the Revolution itself. Independence was simultaneously a tragedy and triumph. Accepting and appreciating this dichotomy is a responsibility that we should assume when thinking about the purpose of America’s past, the strength of its people, and the lessons from history we all must take into the future today.
Too many Americans in today’s social media-driven society throw around the threat of “civil war” without fully appreciating what it would mean to themselves and their families. I would like to think that if they truly understood what it would be like if things devolved, they would shut their mouths and look for alternatives to the political and rhetorical vitriol. If they don’t, they can’t blame anyone but themselves when the horrors of war are visited upon their communities and families. It would be a nightmare that frankly, many would choose not to live through.