Is he believing the "Patriot" scenario?
I'm not saying a few of these couldn't have happened - but a regular "campaign" of sorts to burn churches, especially with civilians there?
Does anyone have salient comments on this?
I hope he's not getting...unreliable.
If any RevWar people can enlighten me on this point, I’d appreciate it.
I know it happened in the battle of Bround Brook. Read the journal of Johann Ewald. British Major John Simcoe burned the Dutch Reformed Church.
Let me ask the obvious... where did you attend school?
Beck has had guests for weeks who have brought evidence of history that we were never taught in school. It is all documented, and he even shows the books and interviewed the authors.
I think that Beck took a scene from Mel Gibson’s fictionalized “The Patriot” as true. There is no evidence that the British burned American churches during the Revolution. Beck’s larger point — the hostility of the British to American religious freedom — is well-founded though. For example, in New York, the British seized non-Anglican churches and used them as barracks and prisons during the Revolution.
You really need to read history. Burning churches happened all over the place during the Revolutionary war.
If you’re not into reading boring history texts, you might watch Mel Gibson’s “The Patriot”, it’s in there too.
ping
Look up the British Raid on Danbury. Oh, wait — let me do it for you. They burned several churches, at least one was Episcopalian. However, they did not burn the Anglican church.
http://www.skyweb.net/~channy/danraid.html
I suspect there is some anti-Beck bias here. Get over it, folks.
The British burned entire cities, so yes, they certainly did burn churches.
From what I’ve read, most atrocities against the colonists where perpetrated in what was then the west by the British indian allies, presumably with English approval.
Don’t think that war back then was genteel. The French and Indian War and Pontiac’s Rebellion, just before the Revolution, were insanely murderous affairs, with no quarter and butchery of the wounded, sometimes of women and children who were not enslaved. And many of the participants in the Revolution were veterans of those events.
Beck probably got his idea from the movie The Patriot, which depicted an occupied church being burned (itself based on a WWII event), but otherwise there is no documented Revolutionary War case of that. This is not to say that there weren’t plenty of other war crimes on both sides - mostly shooting of enemy soldiers who wanted to surrender.
A Dutch reformed Church was burned in the Battle of Bound Brook
http://www.njskylands.com/hsBoundBrook.htm
October 28 * British Major John Simcoe leads raid through Elizabethtown to Bound Brook burning the Dutch Reformed Church and Court House at Millstone (then called Somerset Court House), an unsuccessful attempt to draw the militia into an ambush.
Another Church on the same web site mentioned:
“James Buckmeter
16 Aug 2009, 19:10
My ancestor, Matthias Wade was in the Essex militia and participated in the battle of Springfield, one of the last revolutionary battles. One result of the battle was the burning of the church (Connecticut Farms) and the loss of church records, including Wade family history. There were apparently two Wade family members between Benjamin (the original Wade) and Matthias, but records for them are quite confusing since they apparently had the same names, married women with same names and had children with same names. Benjamin and Matthias are well documented though.
I learn a little more year to year. “
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banastre_Tarleton
Education is your friend. The Wikipedia article has cited sources. Read them and then come back.
A church in Midway, GA, was burned by the British. It’s mentioned on the Midway page of Wiki >>>
Established in 1752, the Midway Congregational Church building was destroyed during the Revolutionary War. British in the area burned it, but it was rebuilt.
There are numerous references to it elsewhere.
There’s this:
http://www.nyfreedom.com/trinitychurch.htm
and this:
http://www.discoversouthcarolina.com/products/3460.aspx
BTW, the colonists burned at least one Anglican church during the Revolution, and others were collateral damage as the British burned entire towns.
Long before the revolution, the British burned or destroyed many Catholic missions in Florida, including St. Augustine (1702).
Not an expert, but hope this helps.
I’m a historian of the period.
The British blaming church leaders for fomenting revolution is true.
The church burnings did happen, the most famous being during Simcoe’s 1779 raid on Bound (not Bround) Brook, NJ.
The claim that the British locked up Americans in the burning churches—that happened in the movie “The Patriot”, but I’m still trying to verify that.
read some history books, Benjamin Franklin’s book talks about this and worse!
It is obvious that the British did not always fight like the gentlemen you have seen depicted in movies, but committed atrocities of what would now be considered war crimes. I suspect that if anyone other than Glenn Beck had mentioned this, it would have gone without comment.
So far, everything the left has objected to has not happened, and once again, Beck gets the last laugh. The mainstream media and the left have made fools of themselves, just as they did with the Shirley Sherrod incident. I find it amazing that such fear can be stirred by one man who has a genuine concern for the American spirit.