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
The DAR is very much in existence. Many of the transcribed pension applications available online are the result of their efforts, directly or indirectly. You may want to go to the link I posted, to see if your ancestor is there. If he’s not, he can be. DAR membership is extended to women who have proved their descent from a Revolutionary War Patriot, and so yours has been, otherwise your mother would not have been able to belong.
I think that part of the reason that the Revolutionary War is not portrayed as much is that because most of the battles were British victories. It’s kinda difficult to make a compelling story out of a struggle of preservation & endurance. Possible, but difficult.
Uh, did I say it was perfectly accurate?
Drums - not seriously involved with the RevWar. Mostly backwoods life.
NW Passage - centered on era of French & Indian.
The Crossing - not a real movie (just TV docudrama).
The DAR is very much in existence. It’s a huge organization that’s very old in itself.
“Then, one of the networks aired a mini-series on Washington which was actually pretty well done (and can be purchased now) - this was in 1976 to celebrate the Bicentennial of our nation’s founding.”
I think you mean the 1984 “George Washington” with Barry Bostwick (my heart be still - he is Washington to me forever more). Fantastic. Unfortunately, it was only ever put out on “video”, and we know what that means.
Maybe part, but I think it’s mostly the domination of the “Civil War”. Everything before that has pretty much been glossed over in history, never mind the wars themselves comparatively.
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Yeah, the Brits would never ... cough, Cooper's tavern ... do anything ... ahem, Jason Russell House ... like that ... Wallabout Bay, Ruddle and Martin Stations ....
Thank you - will investigate the DAR.
One of mine provided the following account in his pension application:
He pursued his brother to Salisbury in May 1780 and volunteered himself as a private for three months in Capt. Hughlett’s company. From that company he was transferred to Capt. William Bostick’s company in Gen. Rutherford’s army. He marched to Charlotte, then to the Cheraw Hills, SC. Across the Santee River, a party of Tories fired on us. We “immediately returned the salute,” the Tories wounded two of the company, and we killed two or three of the Tories. The Tories ran and “forted themselves” in a large church house. Eaton’s group had taken six British and five Tories. “The next morning we fired on their fort & they left it & run when we saved but one of them & burned the house.”
Yes! That’s the mini series I mean! Barry Bostwick played Washington.
OH, I thought it was first aired in 1976,....and then was replayed several years later.
Anyway - LOVED the series too. Have it here.
Your Obdt. Svt.,
P____y
No...we were talking about Brit brutality. That’s what I addressed.
Yes I went to the DAR website and found my ancestor’s name and my mother and grandmother’s names in their database.
Am planning to contact them this week and try to reconnect with the DAR!
Thanks for the help.
My ancestors migrated to Guildford Courthouse with other Nantucket Quaker families on the eve of the Revolution...Nantucket and the whaling industry languished during those years, but N.C. became a little tooo exciting!
Always loved that flag...
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