Today I learned that archeologists recently dug up the bodies of some soldiers who died in the Battle of Camden in 1780:
The battleground remains have been determined to belong to 12 Continental soldiers, one British loyalist and one British regular. Thirteen were honored as heroes in ceremonies planned by countless volunteers, both civilian and military. The 14th individual was determined to have had at least some Native American ancestry and so will be buried with help from the Catawba Nation and the Lumbee Tribe.
Wait. Why are we burying a British soldier? It's not like I have any hard feelings at this point, but shouldn't this redcoat be honored as a hero by Britain, not us?
but shouldn't this redcoat be honored as a hero by Britain, not us?
Maybe no one thought to inform the UK government, and so no arrangements were made to send the remains home?
It's likely that, except for the British Regular, the rest were home; they had already settled here, but did not want to see the colonies break ties with the crown.
Then, as today, the populace was split on issues, and many residents of the various colonies viewed themselves as loyal Englishmen, subject to the crown. John Adams and his crew of muckrakers were relatively small and had about 30% support.
This is why, I've come to believe, the MAGA crowd clings to their stars and their stripes; they believe it will imbue them with the power to rise up and overthrow, just like the original patriots.
I was always taught it was a three way split, one third viewed themselves as loyal Englishmen, one third wanted independence, and one third didn't care but was happy to go along with whomever won. In the end the revolutionist would never have one without the support of the French (due to good diplomacy on the part of the revolutionaries exploiting the French tendency to do anything that makes the British look bad), yet today's MAGAt's are loath to seek French support.
Pretty much, but the 1/3-1/3-1/3 split is for all the colonies combined and the regional pattern was complicated. Most parts of NE were overwhelmingly Patriot, NYC was occupied and environs were contested, PA & NJ were divided in the Delaware Valley but PA pretty Patriot around Reading and westward, but both had sizeable Quaker and other neutralist groups and Philly started the war with a strong cohort of Tory merchants who were driven out after the 9-month British occupation; Eastern Shore was solidly Tory, VA tidewater basically Patriot with neutralists. Farther south it was more complicated by economic and slaveholding status, ethnic/religious identity, conflict with Native Americans, presence or absence of British troops, and these cut against each other in complicated ways.
Andrew Jackson is an example how this worked. They were frontier people on the NC/SC upcountry border and deeply at odds with coastal elites, rice planters who had a death grip on the political system and were overwhelmingly Patriot, hadn't helped frontier people much with either fighting Native people or developing commerce. But the family were Scots-Irish immigrants and despised and hated the British with the heat of a thousand suns, and that was more important when the redcoats and associated militias came upcountry. As a captured teen, Jackson refused to clean a cavalry officer's boots and got gashed along his arm by the guy's saber, and his mother trekked down to prison ships to tend to Patriot prisoners. Hatred and defiance of the British was a central part of his public identity all through his career and actually normal for American public figures (except for a few weirdo cosmopolites) until near the end of the 19th century.
Yes and those same people hate Democrats with the same fire today.
Google paid 99 dollars an hour on the internet. Everything I did was basic Οnline w0rk from comfort at hΟme for 5-7 hours per day that I g0t from this office I f0und over the web and they paid me 100 dollars each hour. For more details
visit this article... https://createmaxwealth.blogspot.com
Hang him up in the town square as a warning to redcoats everywhere.
the redcoat no. the loyalist certainly! damn tory!
Personally, I think insults should be saved for the living.
Biden is right to skip the coronation. I don't mind if their tabloids want to rant for a bit about it, it is good to remind the world that real US Americans don't do hereditary dictatorship.
But pissing on some long-dead soldier doesn't serve any purpose.
Biden is right to skip the coronation. I don't mind if their tabloids want to rant for a bit about it...
Totally. No US president has ever attended the coronation of a British monarch. I see no reason to start now. Do US presidents attend the swearing in of the heads of state of allies like France or Germany? Does the British PM (or indeed the King or Queen) attend our presidential inaugurations?
But pissing on some long-dead soldier doesn't serve any purpose.
Agreed, but, is that your interpretation of Kevin's post? I thought it was a straightforward query as to why it's not Britain that is honoring the fallen soldier in question.
Hereditary dictatorship? HAHAHA. OMG. The American president is far closer to a dictator than the British Monarch. You think QE2 could have rejected Lizz Truss running the country even though everyone knew damn well she was a crazy sex deviant?
Remember the ceremony on the Glomar Explorer?
The British always bury their dead where they fell. There are British war graves all over the world, and for the most part they are honored. The Turks in particular make a point of honor in maintaining the graves of all the fallen at Gallipoli, the British Commonwealth and French as well as their own.
We can at least live up to that standard.
So what is the Turk position on all the Armenians they killed?
Thank you for the reminder; I am ashamed that I not only missed Biden's statement, but forgot Armenian Remembrance Day & didn't wear my necklace this year. It has been many years since I needed to use a book-search firm to locate a copy of Franz Werfel's book about the slaughter.
Worse! The Loyalist!
Bygones, etc.
And also, this is a Kathleen Parker op-ed and her point is southern devotion to war and the martial mind-set, so she's willing to be blase about specifics that might matter to military-minded people or aficionados of either colonial history or the revolutionary war. For them, it's usual to distinguish scrupulously between Continental soldiers and patriot militiamen, but Parker pretty consistently refers to the 12 Continentals here as Patriots. It isn't technically wrong, in the largest context, but it isn't what somebody really into the period would do.
And to Kevin's question specifically, nothing in the column indicates that there wasn't, or won't be, a representative from a nearby British consulate, or the embassy, or the British army itself. There might well have been/will be-- Parker isn't clear whether the formal military and tribal interments have actually happened yet, in fact actually seems to be talking about an informal local ceremony-- and I wouldn't be surprised if the formal observance includes someone from the unit that fought there or its successor. I don't know whether there'd be anyone official there for a Loyalist militiaman, though.
Well, the MAGA cult are functionally monarchists, so they could represent …
It's long established military tradition, at least in Europe, that dead enemies get buried with full honors just like your own dead. Pragmatically, they're dead, they can't hurt you any more, and you don't want decaying corpses littering the landscape.
Thank you.
Given that we have monuments and highways dedicated to those who committed treason in the cause of slavery all over this country (and Monday was Confederate Memorial Day here in AL), why the hell not give a little love to a British flunky caught in the wrong place at the wrong time?
There was in fact a significant official British presence at the ceremony. The official embassy statement is here: https://www.scbattlegroundtrust.org/british-embassy-attendance-and-involvement-at-the-camden-burial-funeral-and-burial.
"Of the fourteen soldiers’ remains recovered at the Camden Battlefield site, there were twelve patriots, one Loyalist, and one soldier with the British 71st Regiment of Foot, Fraser’s Highlanders. In a remarkable effort to ensure each soldier receives the highest of military honors and support, there will be a British presence during the funeral procession and burial ceremony.
...
"Furthermore, one of the military attaches at the embassy, Colonel Alcuin Johnson, has direct links to the regiment that the recovered Highland soldier belonged to, and feels passionately that he should be in attendance.
...
"In addition to Colonel Alcuin [Johnson], the embassy is also sending British soldiers to be pall bearers for the Highlander being buried. A detail from the 2nd Battalion, The Royal Regiment of Scotland will be part of the official ceremonies. There is no shortage of military members interested in being a part of such an importantly historical event. "
The only link Parker provides for anything about this ceremony is to a picture with caption in a local newspaper. The caption is remarkably vague about any specifics of the day. And honestly, so is Parker. She's not interested in what happened there; she's interested in the thoughts it set off.
One link from a google search result turned up the embassy statement. So though it's lamentable to say, Parker isn't a reliable source about the event itself.
Thanks for the detailed follow-up. Some of us longtime Post subscribers stopped bothering to read Parker's take on events & issues some time ago.
I'm with you on that, only read this one because of Kevin's take. I put Parker in pretty much the same basket as Maureen Dowd-- initially promising, like there could be some depth here, but almost every time ending up nowhere for me. So I almost always skip.
Actually that's my reaction to most of the old-guard columns in WAPO and NYT. Particularly NYT, and particularly the "centrist" ones.
I found this page at Wikipedia, which I think explains a lot.
The Grave of British Soldiers in Concord, MA, just a bit north of the town center:
https://www.nps.gov/places/grave-of-british-soldiers-at-the-north-bridge.htm
From the NPS site: "In 1870, Concord's superintendent of public grounds erected 'a small stone slab, with a suitable inscription,' in preparation for the centennial anniversary, as the two small stones marking the grave were 'neither seen nor understood by strangers.' The stone slab inscribed 'Grave of British Soldiers' cost the town $25. In 1877, the town placed additional granite post and chain fencing around the gravesite and in 1910 added an additional marker adorned with a section of James Russel Lowell's poem 'Lines.' Lowell wrote the poem after visiting the gravesite with Nathanial Hawthorne in 1849."
"Show respect to all people and grovel to none." - Chief Tecumseh (1768-1813)
That's from someone that had every right to think of both sides of the American Revolutionary War as the bad guys.
I tried to send a link to "Walter Edgar's Journal" but kept getting this message:
"Not Acceptable!
An appropriate representation of the requested resource could not be found on this server. This error was generated by Mod_Security."
Try Googling "Walter Edgar's Journal" click on the "South Carolina Public Radio" link and page down about three episodes to the one of 4/10/23 .
Sure it's more fun to speculate, but anyone actually interested in how these bodies were found, why they were exhumed, and how they are to be reburied can listen to the radio broadcast referred to above. Walter Edgar is a professor of history who has had a weekly show on the public radio network in South Carolina for 21 years or so. This episode is devoted to this matter.
The Battle of Camden was a terrible defeat for the Continental Army, but two good things came out of it. 1) Washington was able to get rid of Gen. Gates and replace him with Gen. Greene who was his first choice for the job anyway. 2) Fleeing from the battle, Gates was able to set a record for the fastest trip by horseback between Camden and Charlotte. It probably still stands.
Reading about what happened in Texas yesterday, there’s four adults and an innocent child who’d likely still be alive if the crown had won the war. Well, lots of adults and children, actually. I’m beginning to develop a new and different historical perspective on the American war of independence.
This! We'd now be like a very large Canada with warmer weather and (sorry, northern friends) better music.
Yeah Nickelback...
What? Too soon to let it go?
There's kind of a long tradition of honoring war dead where they fall. Kemal Ataturk put it best:
"Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives... you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore, rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours... You the mothers who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears. Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well."
+1