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With all the current hoo-ha about prisoner interrogation in Iraq -- which I
have thrown myself into with a whoop and a holler -- it’s somewhat
providential that through C-Span I have run across material about how the first
Americans handled these matters. It was in a book called “Washington’s Crossing”
by David Hackett Fischer, a historian who spares no effort to get to the real
facts of the events he describes. The title of the book is also the title of
the painting on its cover, the famous one of Washington crossing the Delaware
on his way to fight the British in Trenton. The Trenton campaign is the
subject of the book.
Dr. Fischer enjoys exploding myths which have been taken as gospel for years,
but won’t stand up to the light of day. Here are some:
Washington couldn’t have stood up in the boat the way the painting shows or
he would have fallen out. Dr. Fischer: He had no choice. The boat was
ankle-deep in water and he couldn’t sit down.
The Hessians in Trenton were all hung over from celebrating Christmas and in
no condition to fight. Dr. Fischer: No way. Their real problem was that
they were worn out from fighting off guerrilla attacks and not expecting a whole
army to descend on them.
Alexander Hamilton is the guy on the ten dollar bill and James Monroe is the
guy with the Doctrine. Dr. Fischer: A lot more than that. Monroe is the man
in the boat next to Washington holding the flag. He was wounded in an artery
and would have bled to death except for an EMT who came on the scene in time.
Hamilton was a twenty-year-old boy wonder leading an artillery troop he had
raised and trained himself.
Thinking I’d learned everything there was to know about the American
Revolution when I was in school, I neglected it afterwards until getting into a book
called “In Defense of the Public Liberty” by Samuel Griffith, a retired
Marine general. He cleared up a lot of things and fixed the chronology in my mind.
Now Dr. Fischer has carried this work further. It is particularly relevant
today in bringing out the contrast between American practice in the Revolution
and the things done by some Americans in Iraq.
The Iraq “things” happened after the book came out, so the following
excerpts from it were not written with them in mind. But they could have been:
The Policy of Humanity
Another issue was the treatment of prisoners. After the battles in New York
, thousands of American prisoners of war were treated with extreme cruelty by
British captors. Some Americans were confined in the churches of New York
City, which were desecrated by scenes of suffering, cruelty and starvation.
Other Americans went to prison hulks in New York Harbor and died miserably in
large numbers. Some escaped, and their reports had the same impact as those of
American prisoners of the Japanese in the Second World War.
An American policy on prisoners emerged after the battle of Trenton.
Washington ordered that Hessian captives would be treated as human beings with the
same rights of humanity for which Americans were striving.
Of 13,988 Hessian soldiers who survived the war, 3,194 (23 per cent) chose to
remain in America. Others later emigrated to the New World with their
families.
The above excerpts speak for themselves as to how Washington felt about the
prisoner question. He ordered that the British be treated in the same way as
the Hessians. He didn’t get perfect compliance of course, but he got probably
90%. That was pretty good, considering the behavior of the British toward
prisoners as described in the first excerpt above. Most of the time they didn’t
take prisoners, refusing their surrenders under the policy of “no quarter”.
Washington established the opposite policy, prohibiting refusal of “quarter”
and making it a right to be extended to any man who surrendered.
The British didn’t always respond as well as the Hessians. In the last phase
of the war, 1780-81, (not covered in the book) a British colonel named
Banastre Tarleton got a bad name for his operations in the South. Apparently he is
the model for the insufferable officer in Mel Gibson’s “Patriot” movie.
Like Tarleton, this fellow burnt churches, but unlike him, they were occupied
ones with the doors locked. Gibson is inclined to exaggerate things in this way.
What happened in the rest of the movie I don’t know, but I do know that the
real Tarleton eventually got a whipping and was heard of no more. After that
Cornwallis was bottled up in Yorktown past help from the British fleet, whom
the French prevented from entering Chesapeake Bay, and the war was brought to a
satisfactory conclusion.
Dr. Fischer makes a lot of connections between revolutionary America and the
present, finding that just about everything we do today had its origins then.
He finds that the “policy of humanity” was an innovation in warmaking, so
was the kind of consultation Washington engaged in with his generals instead of
just ordering them about, so were a lot of progressive things that started
here and spread throughout the world eventually. He doesn’t approve of
everything of course. He says opposition to taxes began at that time led by “sleazy
politicians”, a breed who are still at it today. It doesn’t seem to occur to
him that the sleazy types may be the politicians who like taxes. They empower
them, after all. The more tax money flows in to the government, the more the
politicians are aggrandized. They spend it where it will do them the most
good. Every businessman, every contractor, every farmer, every inhabitant, for
God’s sake, has his hand out, always with a promise that he’ll won’t forget
his benefactor at the next election. That is why the high-tax folks in
Congress mostly hang on to their jobs to the bitter end. It’s the low-tax people
who will be seen voluntarily leaving office early, usually, though not always,
Republicans from the heartland. So much for who are the “sleazy” politicians.
A politician who doesn’t like taxes must be considered an honest man. To
refuse to raise them is a self-denying act. He won’t be able to shmear his
supporters with government money in the way the tax fiends are able to. So Dr.
Fischer is off base here, possibly because he’s a university professor and
universities are always out “cupping” for government money, but he must be forgiven
for this out of gratitude for a good book. As Judy Garland used to sing, “I’
m mad about good books, Can’t get my fill.” This is one of them. A good
choice for Memorial Day.
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