This article dispelled some ideas that I had about the Revolutionary War. It was interesting and shocking to learn about something I thought I knew well.
1. The first thing that struck me was that many people thought that the Civil War was more significant than the Revolutionary War. I had always thought the birth of our nation was more important than a war fought over slavery. But learning this lead me to discover something intriguing. That history can be changed as it happens, it can be diluted or concentrated so that many years later what happened and what is thought to have happened are very different.
2. It is odd how people thought of the revolution compared to the Civil War. They found the Civil War to be a great war with sacrifice and death. And this was true of the revolution, they saw war as a way to solidify American nationalism and that it was a critical step in the building of a new nation. But when the militiamen were easily beaten in the War of 1812 may have caused this idea to shift. How could this ragtag army be so powerful? And it was after this that there was a shift from politics being more significant than war. This changed the way the revolution was remembered, and it eventually caused people to think that the revolution was less bloody than the Civil War.
3. This leads to the next thing I learned. The American Revolution was bloody. Very bloody. This my seem obvious, but I seem to have become a victim of the manipulated history of our nation's birth. Paintings of time almost romanticize the Revolution. Washington Crossing the Delaware isn't exactly what happened that night, but we take it almost as fact. When I think of the Revolutionary War I think of the protestation of taxes, civil disobedience, political maneuvering, but not as much of the gruesome battles that actually happened. This may be the fault of contemporary artwork, but nonetheless the grotesque battles of the revolution can't be ignored. Soldiers described the battles as the "most infernal fire", with cannons destroying everything in their path, or musket fire mangling the enemy lines. This was not a war won only through politics, but also through the horrendous acts that soldiers had to endure to ensure that their nation had a chance.
4. The amount of suffering that soldiers went through is shocking. I had prieviously thought that Valley Forge had been the worst time for American soldiers, while in fact the war was terrible all of the time for everyone. Men didn't have enough supplies to keep them healthy, many died as a result. Bloody footsteps would be left behind by soldiers without even shoes to wear. The only thing they lacked more was food. These men would resort to very desperate measures to stay alive. It has been documented that some soldiers would try to eat bark or boil their shoes down into a soup with melted candles. These are horrible conditions that I had severely underestimated.
5. Not only did the soldies suffer, but the atrocities committed by the soldiers on civilians is more shocking. Learning about the Revolutionary War in school, it was never really mentioned how soldiers would treat civilians, or how they played into the revolution (other than protest and civil disobedience). So when I read that many civilians had been "killed in their beds" while trying to get to safety is eye opening. DIsease and Native American attacks also took a toll. But it is also not explained to a good extent how badly Loyalists were treated. After the war was over five percent of Loyalists went into exile, compared to not even one percent of Confederates in the Civil War.
Overall, this article made the revolution real in a way that shocked me into really re-thinking our nation's history.
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