tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post5819414573307182422..comments2024-03-28T04:26:30.557-05:00Comments on Boston 1775: Calculating Richard Stockton’s LossesUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-10992150582286936252008-09-11T12:18:00.000-05:002008-09-11T12:18:00.000-05:00Most of the accounts of British military “atrociti...Most of the accounts of British military “atrocities” from the Revolutionary War are based entirely on American sources, either from the war or the early 1800s. And they tended to assume the worst of the enemy and British intentions.<BR/><BR/>Only in the early 1900s did American historians get to British sources of the same events. That coincided with the forging of the long, close alliance between the U.S. of A. and the U.K., which probably made the readings of those British sources more sympathetic. In many cases the “atrocities” were then deemed exaggerated or the result of confusion rather than orders. Authors also noted how those British accounts contained similar complaints about the American troops.<BR/><BR/>I’ve seen no evidence of British army orders to destroy Stockton’s property. Indeed, since the dragoons and then Gen. Cornwallis were using the house, they had no reason to ruin it as long as they expected to remain. But it’s possible that a 20th-century history I haven’t seen (<I>A House Called Morven</I>, published in 1954) would tell more from the British side.<BR/><BR/>Some nineteenth-century American accounts said it was common for British troops to destroy houses’ china and glass as they left, and some said the troops burned Stockton’s library for fuel. (It was winter, after all.) But they offered no evidence for these statements beyond hints that the accounts came from the Stockton family. <BR/><BR/>The family certainly missed the library. They passed down this anecdote: “When Mrs. Stockton heard of the destruction of her noble library, she is said to have remarked that there were two books in it which she particularly valued—the Bible and [Thomas] Young’s <I>Night Thoughts</I>.” <BR/><BR/>On the other hand, Dr. Benjamin Rush didn’t mention the loss of books in his letter from 1777. I bet they didn’t seem so important at the time.J. L. Bellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15405157000473731801noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28102666.post-44939234928253866772008-09-11T08:19:00.000-05:002008-09-11T08:19:00.000-05:00Speaking as a manager, I find it difficult to beli...Speaking as a manager, I find it difficult to believe that the entire contents of the house were destroyed in two weeks, let alone the livestock driven off and the farm fields laid waste. That is a lot of work, particularly for mounted infantry who might feel themselves above manual labor. The task of burning books, for example, is not as easy as it sounds: the fire has to be stirred and monitored continuously, a tedious job. So it is not credible to me that dragoons would have put themselves to such effort, and if it were something ordered by their superiors, surely there would be documentation of the issuance or reception of the order?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com