Friday, January 8, 2010

Myths About the American Revolution

The Pink Flamingo has a good article here on the popular myths of the American Revolution. See Excellent Article About Myths of American Revolution.

Very good. I have been researching my family tree including those that fought in the American Revolution. What is often missed is that a good many Americans set out the war waiting to see who would win. Also there were a ton of Loyalisst. In fact when you start researching this one wonders if you had to pick a side what side would you be on? Heretical I am sure.

What is often missed is how much a Southern War the American Revolution was. We sort of saw this in the movie Patriot. (More on that movie later). However what that movie really did not hit enough was that it was truly a nasty CIVIL WAR. There was significant Loyalist sentiment in the rural areas.

About four of my ancestors were involved in the war in South Carolina. Nasty business indeed. People took sides and well we had a result.

One thing about the Patriot is well it is sort of misleading in some ways. In a way it is amusing because we see this played out all the time over historyy. The villians are not exactly as nasty in reality.

We see this play out eith the American Civil War among people in the South. OH THAT HORRIBLE GENERAL SHERMAN. Everyone talks about how their ancestors were hurt by Sherman. Yet when you look at a map you realize Sherman never came within 100 miles of them in most cases.

We sort of saw that in the movie Patriot where all sort of legends have grown up among the "evil" Banastre Tarleton who is portrayed in the movie as WILL TAVINGTON . You know the guy that loves watching Mel Gibson's little boys die in agony. This web site does a good and fun job of trying to correct the record.

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