The war
against the British to obtain independence was to an extent due to the
lust for power and land as mentioned in part one. The British parliament
taxed the residents of the British Isles more heavily than the
Americans. Some of these propaganda myths have been exposed by the
spotlight of truth in the book titled "Iron Tears". There was a
Continental Congress that could levy some taxes but often lacked the
authority, power and will to collect moneys. The desperate pleas of
Washington to the Congress throughout the war and his descriptions of
the plight of the common soldiers who left bloody footprints in the snow
while walking barefoot at Valley Forge met with idle patriotic rant
without adequate support. The Congress then showed the same callous
indifference prevalent today by the administration chicken hawks failing
to provide armor for vehicles and soldiers and cutting veterans’
benefits.
As has been true throughout American history the bone of contention and
apple of discord have been slavery and the status of the blacks. Nearly
20% of the continental army consisted of African Americans. Those who
were free or runaway slaves joined by being misled by proclamations of
freedom. Slaves were volunteered by their masters to serve instead of
them and the poor continue to be cannon fodder from 1776 through the
present in the draft or volunteer army. Initially the high minded
bigoted racist leaders of the Revolution refused to accept free blacks
as soldiers, but the reluctance of the well off whites to enlist and the
seasonal desertion of the small landowner whites to sow and reap their
sustaining harvests, made the landless blacks, some of the few perennial
enlisted men. A chastened Washington then changed the recruitment
policy. The British countered this by promising freedom to all slaves
who ran away and joined the British ranks. The infamous Cornwallis
betrayed them. He kept them segregated without proper rations or hygiene
and an epidemic of smallpox and dysentery broke out. The ethically
challenged British used the military strategy of sending the smallpox
infected hordes into the camps of the American rebels. Similar and
genocidal strategies have been routinely used in America, Africa and
Australia during colonial conquests and settlement. It was only after
the British became victims of German chemical warfare in WW1 that they
evolved the high minded policy prohibiting biological and chemical
warfare.
It was the French fleet that provided the anvil on the Virginia coast on
which Washington’s army supported by the French troops became the hammer
to crush Cornwallis to defeat. Once again the most dangerous assault
leading to massive casualties was assigned to an all black regiment
which suffered the expected consequences. So much for the ignorance of
retarded congressmen unaware that freedom came due to the French.
Without them we would have just been fries. Incidentally for the readers
from India, the defeated Cornwallis was then shipped to India as the
Governor General and lived triumphantly ever after. He may have been
responsible for or connived at the "humane" British military policy of
taking children hostage, as was done to the children of Tippu Sultan.
That is how the human rights policy of the West began.
The worst betrayal of the African Americans by both sides occurred after
the war. A few British generals kept their promise and evacuated the
runaway slaves to Canada, but most were left behind in the US and
returned to slavery. Those blacks who fought with the continental army
rarely got freedom or a pension. They were betrayed and to his utter
shame, Washington in negotiating the terms of surrender asked for the
return of the slaves which included some of his own. This immoral streak
of his persisted through his life despite the efforts of Lafayette. He
tried to use his federal authority and underlings to trick a runaway
woman slave to board a vessel in Boston that was to shanghai her back to
Virginia. Fortunately a decent honest Bostonian alerted the slave and
she escaped. At one time President Washington had to reside in the
capital Philadelphia. Pennsylvania and the New England states had
abolished slavery. Any slave brought from the South into Pennsylvania,
who spent a period of six continuous months residing in the state was
automatically freed. Thus Washington rotated his slaves to avoid this.
He had a problem in his excellent slave cook whose cooking he loved. He
tried to rotate the cook, who understood his motives and escaped. It is
only in his final years facing imminent mortality, possibly after an
epiphany, that he took concrete steps to free his slaves. To give him
due credit, he then did the right thing and forbade any heirs from
countermanding his wishes. He knew the times and his heirs.
The other bete noire of the American colonists did not escape the war of
independence unharmed. In their spare and idle moments, the militia
carried out punitive raids on isolated American Indian settlements at
critical seasonal times. They destroyed the harvested or to be harvested
crops in the fall or beginning of winter leaving the Indians to perish
by starvation if they escaped the initial massacre. There were bounties
for Indian scalps and the adage "The only good Injun is a dead injun"
though formulated during the western conquest was already in practice in
the east and on the western border of the original thirteen colonies.
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