by Ray Raphael
In tales such as The Patriot, the fight is between the British, who are cruel or indifferent, and the Americans, who are forced to respond. History was far more complicated than that. Consider: Who is the hero and who is the villain in each of the following tales?
•After Tories had beaten his mother, William Gipson of South Carolina admitted that he took “no little satisfaction†in torturing a prisoner who was placed in his charge: “He was placed with one foot upon a sharp pin drove in a block, and was turned round . . . until the pin run through his foot.â€6
•A Tory from Georgia, Thomas Brown, was accosted by a patriot mob. Trying to defend himself, he shot one of the patriots in the foot. The mob subdued him, tarred his legs, branded his feet, and took off part of his scalp. Brown lost two of his toes and could not walk for months. Once he had recovered, he organized a band of Tories and Indians that raided patriot plantations for the remainder of the war.7
•Moses Hall, a patriot from North Carolina, suffered a “distressing gloom†when he observed his comrades murder six defenseless prisoners: “I heard some of our men cry out ‘Remember Buford,’ and the prisoners were immediately hewed to pieces with broadswords.†Reeling with “horror,†Hall retreated to his quarters and “contemplated the cruelties of warâ€â€”but not for long. On a subsequent march, he came upon a sixteen-year-old boy, an innocent observer, who had been run through with a British bayonet to keep him from passing information to the patriots. “The sight of this unoffending boy, butchered . . . relieved me of my distressful feeling for the slaughter of the Tories, and I desired nothing so much as the opportunity of participating in their destruction.â€8
In cases such as these, how can we portray one side as filled with virtue, the other with vice? Barbarous acts, and the retribution they inspired, crossed political boundaries. Real-life patriots participated in this gruesome game of retribution. Frequently, they too slaughtered men who were trying to surrender or had already been taken into custody. In the aftermath of the patriot victory at King’s Mountain, Colonel William Campbell tried to “restrain the disorderly manner of slaughtering and disturbing the prisoners.â€9 His orders were not heeded; prisoners were prodded and trampled to death when they couldn’t keep up with the march. A late-night mock trial ended in the summary execution of nine Tories. “It is impossible for those who have not lived in its midst, to conceive of the exasperation which prevails in a civil war,†explained Colonel Isaac Shelby, one of the executioners, as he justified his actions years later. “The execution . . . was believed by those who were on the ground, to be both necessary and proper, for the purpose of putting a stop to the execution of the patriots in the Carolinas by the Tories and the British.â€10
MY COUNTRY, RIGHT OR WRONG
Early American historians, members of the Revolutionary generation, could not ignore the obvious: the war for independence from Britain was also a civil war among Americans, particularly in the South. Tories who had “embodied†as soldiers, wrote William Gordon in 1788, “marched along the western frontiers of South Carolina. They had such numbers of the most infamous characters among them that their general complexion was that of a plundering banditti.†Some of the patriots, he admitted, were little better: “Many of the professed whigs disgraced themselves, by the burnings, plunderings and cruelties, that they practiced in their turn on the royalists.â€11 Gordon cited General Nathanael Greene, who bemoaned the “embarrassments†caused by the patriot militia’s “savage disposition†and “mode of conducting war.†While Gordon confessed that patriots engaged in wrongdoing, his admission contained a disclaimer: officers like Greene and Francis Marion, the good patriots, tried to put an end to the misbehavior of bad patriots.12
David Ramsay, in his 1785 History of the Revolution in South Carolina, attributed all sorts of foul deeds to Thomas Brown, the Tory who had been tortured by patriots. Brown had hanged prisoners without trial, Ramsay said, and he had turned some over to Indians to be scalped. When a mother offered a passionate plea to spare the life of her son, Brown had turned a deaf ear.13 The following year, Brown complained directly to Ramsay, denying the atrocities and explaining the hangings: he was under direct orders to hang prisoners who had violated their parole, and the son of the pleading mother had recently engaged in the systematic torture of Tory prisoners before they were executed.14 In his 1789 History of the American Revolution, Ramsay removed all reference to Thomas Brown’s villainy—but the rumors he had helped to spread four years earlier did not disappear. In his magnum opus, Ramsay covered the civil war with a more balanced approach:
Individuals whose passions were inflamed by injuries, and exasperated with personal animosity, were eager to gratify revenge in violation of the laws of war. Murders had produced murders. Plundering, assassinations, and house burning, had become common. Zeal for the King or the Congress were the ostensible motives of action; but in several of both sides, the love of plunder, private pique, and a savageness of disposition, led to actions which were disgraceful to human nature. Such was the exasperation of whigs against tories, and of tories against whigs; and so much had they suffered from and inflicted on each other, that the laws of war, and the precepts of humanity afforded but a feeble security for the observance of capitulations on either side.15
Ramsay went on to philosophize about “the folly and madness of war,†and he concluded that “war never fails to injure the morals of the people engaged in itâ€; the patriots were no exception.16
Mercy Otis Warren, writing in 1805, admitted that the Revolution had included a “domestic war†and that patriot soldiers, like their adversaries, had evidenced barbarous behavior, but she added a stronger disclaimer: patriotic Americans were never as bad as the British and Tories. Fortunately, she stated, they had lacked “a fierce spirit of revenge.†In her concluding remarks, Warren commended the Revolutionaries for their moderation:
Great revolutions ever produce excesses and miseries at which humanity revolts. In America . . . the scenes of barbarity were not so universal as have been usual in other countries that have been at once shaken by foreign and domestic war. . . . The United States may congratulate themselves on the success of a revolution which has done honor to the human character by exhibiting a mildness of spirit amid the ferocity of war, that prevented the shocking scenes of cruelty, butchery, and slaughter, which have too often stained the actions of men, when their original intentions were the result of pure motives and justifiable resistance.17
Patriotic writers of the following generation did not focus much attention on the barbaric civil war in the South. Charles Goodrich, writing in 1823, said not a word of it; the war was only a struggle for independence from Great Britain, not a true “revolution†featuring domestic upheaval here in America. When writers in the early and mid–nineteenth century did mention the civil war in the Southern backcountry, they, like Warren, issued an immediate qualification:
But censure ought not to rest equally upon the two parties. In the commencement of the contest, the British, to terrify the people into submission, set an example which the tories were quick, but the whigs slow, to follow; and in its progress the American generals, and they alone, seized every occasion to discountenance such vindictive and barbarous conduct.18
The chain of blame was never more clearly stated: the British were the worst, followed in order by Tories and common patriots. Only patriot leaders were beyond reproof. In 1838 John Frost stated flatly, “The British generally conducted the war with cruelty and rancour.â€19
George Bancroft, in the mid–nineteenth century, wrote that British leaders were “the most brutal of mankind,†while Americans were “incapable of imitating precedents of barbarity.†He singled out Banastre Tarleton and Thomas Brown for particular blame. “The line
of [Tarleton’s] march could be traced by groups of houseless women and children,†he wrote—although in fact this was true in the wake of any march at the time, no matter what the army. He repeated and embellished the rumor that prisoners taken by Brown had been delivered to Cherokee Indians, who tomahawked them or threw them into fires. Any questionable behavior on the part of the patriots, meanwhile, was excused as justifiable retaliation. After their victory at King’s Mountain, patriots had hanged several of the prisoners they took. When describing these executions, Bancroft wrote:
Among the captives there were house-burners and assassins. Private soldiers—who had witnessed the sorrows of children and women, robbed and wronged, shelterless, stripped of all clothes but those they wore, nestling about fires kindled on the ground, and mourning for their fathers and husbands—executed nine or ten in retaliation for the frequent and barbarous use of the gallows at Camden, Ninety-Six, and Augusta; but Campbell at once intervened, and in general orders, by threatening the delinquents with certain and effectual punishment, secured protection to the prisoners.20
Bancroft wanted to have it both ways: the “house-burners and assassins†deserved the worst, yet benevolent patriot officers still protected them—at least those who had not yet been hanged.
Starting in the mid–nineteenth century, some academic historians challenged the traditional patriotic wisdom by refusing to lay greater blame on the British or Tories. “Whigs and Tories pursued each other with little less than savage fury,†Richard Hildreth wrote in 1851. “Small parties, every where under arms, some on one side, some on the other, with very little reference to greater operations, were desperately bent on plunder and blood.â€21 Forty years later, John Fiske stated bluntly: “There can be no doubt that Whigs and Tories were alike guilty of cruelty and injustice.â€22 By the turn of the century, a few American historians were displaying definite sympathies for the loyalists, who had suffered “lawless persecution†at the hands of “irresponsible mobs†of patriots.23 All crowd actions, even those of the American Revolution, were to be discredited, for they were disruptive to the social order.
Histories that did not favor patriots over loyalists, however, were not always greeted favorably outside academic circles. During the first half of the twentieth century, the views of Progressive historians were perceived as a threat to traditional American values. Attempts by the Progressive education movement to introduce a spirit of relativism in the schools caused traditionalists to recoil. Patriots and loyalists should never be placed on an equal footing, they claimed. An officer of the Daughters of the Colonial Wars, for instance, complained about books that “give a child an unbiased viewpoint instead of teaching him real Americanism. All the old histories taught my country right or wrong. That’s the point of view we want our children to adopt. We can’t afford to teach them to be unbiased and let them make up their own minds.â€24
In the 1960s, scholars practicing “the new social history†began looking long and hard at the brutal fighting in the South during the later stages of the Revolutionary War, trying to decipher the peculiar local logic that led to the breakdown of civil society. Why, they asked, did particular individuals or groups become partisans to this side or that? How did the differences among neighbors escalate so quickly to such a fever pitch? Professional historians have found no easy answers—and in the absence of any clear alternatives, the simple morality tale lives on.
Indeed, the tale has been embellished. No nineteenth-century writer depicted the brutal British burning a church, with all the inhabitants of a village inside. But the makers of The Patriot did, even though there is nothing in the historical record to suggest such a horrific occurrence during the War for Independence. As historian David Hackett Fischer observes, “Something remarkably like this event actually happened, but not in South Carolina during the American Revolution. It happened in the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane on June 10, 1944, during World War II. . . . There were atrocities enough on both sides in the American Revolution, but the German director has converted an 18th-century British and American loyalist army into the S.S.â€25
Sometimes, as in The Patriot, the good-versus-bad theme is deafening; often, it is muted but still audible. Popular writers today, in a tone reminiscent of Mercy Otis Warren, give some notice to the brutal civil war, but they find ways of qualifying any condemnation of the patriots. In Liberty! Thomas Fleming refers to “the savage seesaw war,†but the only examples of savagery he presents were committed by the other side. Thomas Brown, he reports, hanged thirteen wounded patriots “in the stairwell of his house, where he could watch them die from his bed.â€26 The reporting of such callousness is calculated to leave a firmly biased impression on the reader. Fleming fails to note that the hangings did not take place in Brown’s own house, as implied; that if Brown was in bed, it was because he had just been wounded; that the hangings had been ordered by his superiors; and that the man who originally spread the rumor, David Ramsay, later disavowed it. Instead, he restates without question the conventional story about this Tory villain, treating him as the “devil incarnate,†in the words of one nineteenth-century historian.27
Robert Leckie, in George Washington’s War, offers a vivid description of patriots mowing down loyalists who were trying to surrender at King’s Mountain:
The rebel blood was up, their vengeance fed by the memory of the Waxhaws. “Buford! Buford!†they shouted. “Tarleton’s Quarter! Tarleton’s Quarter!†They pursued their frightened victims as they ran to a hollow place on the hilltop and cowered there in horror. One by one, the frontiersmen cut them down, sometimes singling out neighbors by name before they fired. Many of the Patriots thirsted to revenge themselves on the deaths of relatives and friends who were murdered by the Tories. Their eyes glittered maniacally as they loaded and fired . . . loaded and fired . . . At last Major Evan Shelby called on the Loyalists to throw down their arms. They did, but the rebel rifles still blazed. [Ellipses as in the original.]28
But were these real patriots who acted so savagely? Not exactly. They were illiterate “Irish and Scots-Irish†who called their rifles “Sweet Lips†or “Hot Lead.†“None of them could have quoted a line from Tom Paine’s Common Sense,†Leckie writes, “and the phrase Declaration of Independence meant about as much to them as it did to their livestock.â€29 They were animals, not Americans; their deeds need not reflect poorly on the cause. Undue cruelties attributed to Americans must somehow be deflected, if they cannot be defended.
Many of today’s textbooks continue to slant their coverage of the brutal civil war in the South. “Loyalist bands roamed the backcountry,†reports a middle-school text. “They plundered and burned Patriot farms, killing men, women, and children.†Treatment of the other side, by contrast, is far more respectful: “Francis Marion led his men silently through the swamps. They attacked without warning, then escaped. Marion’s guerrilla attacks were so efficient that he won the nickname ‘Swamp Fox.’ †One side plunders, burns, and kills, but when the other side does likewise, it is merely being “efficient.†The language tells us very clearly how we should react.30 Another middle-school text announces that “the southern war was particularly brutal†and “pitted Americans—Patriots versus Loyalists—against each other in direct combat.†This much is true, but it says no more about American brutality; instead, it states clearly that the British “destroyed crops, farm animals, and other property as they marched through the South†and mentions only one man by name: Banastre Tarleton, the British officer who “sowed fear throughout the South by refusing to take prisoners and killing soldiers who tried to surrender.â€31 A college text tips its hand with an adverb: “The colony of Georgia was ruthlessly ov
errun [by the British] in 1778–1779.†(Emphasis added.) Significantly, this text describes no American advance—not even the purposive “scorched earth†annihilation of Iroquois lands, villages, and people in the North (see chapter 14)—as “ruthless.â€32 Such biased language is not new; in fact, this exact same sentence appears in the first edition of the textbook, published in 1956.33 But due to “textbook lag†(see Afterword), the words persist and still have force, despite cultural changes in sensitivities since the mid–twentieth century.
Some textbooks now display more balance, attributing blame to both sides. In South Carolina, says one college text, “Most of the upcountry was stripped bare. As each side took control, neighbors attacked each other, plundered each other’s farms, and carried away each other’s slaves.â€34 Another college text offers the usual fare—“Banastre Tarleton led one especially vicious company of loyalists who slaughtered civilians and murdered many who surrenderedâ€â€”but follows this with a parallel account of an American leader: “In retaliation, planter and merchant Thomas Sumter organized 800 men who showed a similar disregard to regular army procedures, raiding largely defenseless loyalist settlements near Hanging Rock, South Carolina, in August 1780.â€35
Such passages convert what used to appear as liabilities—the uncivilized acts committed by some Americans, which undercut the national image of moral superiority—into teachable moments. Unbiased reporting of the brutal civil war in the Southern interior exposes the cycle of revenge and its unseemly consequences. Insofar as this message is received and internalized, senseless wars become less likely. On the other hand, pointing to atrocities committed only by the enemy panders to instincts of revenge, always the fodder of war hawks. Retributive violence becomes viewed as rational, leading otherwise decent people to sanction brutal acts they would normally condemn.
