When I bought this book in June 2017 I was happily planning to write my next JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION article under the title "What was Wrong with Hanging Tories in North Carolina?" I had to drop it to do a Melville Library of America volume, COMPLETE POEMS. Then I got very sick and began divesting myself of my Melville collection, first, then my ten thousand family items on my computer. Then George Floyd was killed and I had to make a selection of documents. Now, improbably, I have finished a book, AN OKIE'S RACIAL RECKONINGS. I wrote this in mid-2017, before all hell broke loose. It is about Holger Hoock's SCARS OF INDEPENDENCE: AMERICA'S VIOLENT BIRTH.
"There are always 2 sides to every issue." Sure!
This morning I had to respond to a "2 sides" comment in JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION:
An
even-handed judicious see-all-sides-of-every-issue sort of fellow, I have been
reading Holger Hoock's SCARS OF INDEPENDENCE. Now, it's relevant to deduce that
"educated at Freiburg and Cambridge" with a doctorate from Oxford
means that, well, that Hoock is German-born and England-educated. One can
expect a certain amount of sympathy with the British in his book. And one does
find remarkable passages, such as on 319 his declaring: "Among the most
notorious rebels was Colonel Benjamin 'Bull Dog' Cleveland, who terrorized
Loyalists in the Yadkin country." I have been following Cleveland for many
months because some of my cousins rode with him and I never heard him called
"Bull Dog." I have a strong desire to celebrate Cleveland in a little
article I have been calling “What Was Wrong with Hanging Tories?” Bull
Dog? I just checked Google and find that of all people Patrick
Ferguson, the “if you choose to be pissed on forever by a set of mongrels” man,
was known as “Bull Dog.”
Then
you turn the page to 320 and find this: “Loyalists gave as brutally as they
got.” Well, given the sequence of brutality a true not-quite-rabid Whig might
mutter something like, “Loyalists continued their unspeakable brutality.” What
I am getting at is an apparent instinctive bias which in fact Hoock overcomes
as best he can.
Whether
or not you will agree about the instinctive bias, I point to pages 308-313, the
“Beasts of Prey” section. Hoock makes it clear that the Patriots who cried
“Tarleton’s quarter” knew exactly what slaughter they were avenging. The fact
that Tarleton was celebrated once he got home says more about the British need
to justify themselves than it says about their knowledge of what kind of
brutality Tarleton engaged in—even assuming they knew more about it than they
likely did. I have not tried to find what reports were published in England.
The
paragraph on 320 beginning “such sadistic American-on-American cruelty”
(equating what happened to Thomas Brown with what William Cunningham did) is
devoted to “Pyle’s Massacre” conducted by those amazingly successful tricksters
led by Henry Lee. I have been waiting years to say “I have a dog in this hunt.”
I have a dog in this hunt because my Tory Uncle John, Dr. John Pyle Jr., lost an eye
and part of a hand in this event. I have cousins (one was David Cockerham) on
the other (Whig) side. In all even-handedness I judge that Pyle’s Hacking Party went
far to deter Tories from rising up to welcome Cornwallis’s triumphal march
through North Carolina.
I
am not saying Hoock’s bias runs all through but I am saying that if even he
understands the horror of Tarleton’s slaughter of wounded rebels, then this is
not the time for our pulling the opposing fighting boys apart by their collars
and saying Shame on both of you! Go play nicely! I am going to let myself try
being judgmental for once, about Tarleton, just as Hoock is. And think about
writing “What Was Wrong with Hanging Tories?”
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