Tag: British Empire

1780OCT – War Amongst Us, What is that Like?

I do believe it is easy for those insulated from war to have no clue as to the short and long term impact of war on people and society. Many of the politicians, generals and admirals remain out of harms way while giving orders to troops on the ground, in the air and on the oceans treating all of this like a video game. At the end of the day they return to their suburban Northern Virginia homes have been able to compartmentalize their day’s decisions that negatively impacted hundreds if not thousands of men and women not counting tens of thousands innocent men, women and children and the lands and societies they have to deal with on a daily basis. American foreign policy is the root negative issue in most parts of this globe while free market forces are solving poverty and other societal issues worldwide in a positive light.

Returning to the 1780 South Carolina colony that is seeking independence in federation with 12 other American colonies from British rule, if one only reads and understands the dates, stats and facts of the various expeditions the British regulars, American Continentals, and militias on both sides accomplished, one misses understanding what it was like for the average family that endured this 7 or 8 year war that was not regulated to far away fields of battle but took place ‘amongst’ us [movie “The Patriot” clip]:

To learn a “Tier 1” only history about a regional conflict only exposes the tip of the iceberg.  Tier 1, if done right should tease readers and listeners to ask questions about Tier 2, a deeper insight into the daily life of the people involved and how it changed the communities involved.

Americans learn Tier 1 in this history classes in schools, Tier 2 requires one to invest the time to seek out deeper understanding, the ability to enter that period of time IN CONTEXT to fully adsorb what was won and what was lost. In the movie “The Patriot”, only the positives were communicated:

The feel good ending to this movie can only allow reality to counterbalance this by investigating, CSI if you will, how free American colonists were before and after the war. While Benjamin Martin (fictitious character that was the combination of three South Carolina militia leaders Pickens, Sumter and Marion) seems to be doing much better, Francis Marion would tell you differently, and that would be even BEFORE the end of this war!

One of the richest insights can be gained by a read of John Oller’s 2016 book “The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution“.  I have included a few clips below that related directly to the posts I have had about October 1780 recently (here, here and here):

With the quieting of the Tory threat east of Camden, Marion sat at Ami’s Mill pondering his next move. On October 4 he confessed to Gates that he had suffered many fatigues over the previous few weeks but had managed to surmount them. He had never had more than sixty or seventy men with him of all ranks, and sometimes as few as a dozen. In some cases he had been forced to fight against men who had left him to join the enemy; he regretted that he had no authority to punish them. If he had a hundred men from Gates’s army, he thought, he could “certainly pay a visit to Georgetown” and attack the British garrison there. But Gates had answered none of his letters—

So early in October, Marion felt very alone after the three wins his militia had in late September that kept the British distracted from rolling up the colonies towards Virginia and eventually toward Washington’s Continentals in Pennsylvania and New Jersey while British General Clinton totally controlled the port of New York with his troops. It had been a stalemate in the north for months now.

Marion also felt the shift in what his leadership skills had to adjust to in commanding Continental regulars who obey verses volunteer militia that could quit at anytime ESPECIALLY if a command was given that the men did not agree with. I contend that this keeps leadership personnel honest and weeds out “management” personnel who are only worried about the status quo and their own position in the politics of things.

Brilliantly, Marion makes yet another bold move ..

Marion decided to make a little probing incursion against Georgetown anyway. He heard that Micajah Ganey, the Tory whose force he had bested at the Blue Savannah, was in Georgetown to reinforce the British garrison there. On October 9 Marion entered the city unmolested with forty men on horse and, once inside, issued a rather audacious demand to the garrison commander to surrender.

So if you have been reading my Tier 1 posts, you thought that Francis Marion and the men that remained with him took three week off from the conflict when in fact, they did venture into “British occupied territory” to harass the Redcoats!

While the British did not surrender …

Before leaving, however, and to show the enemy he was a force to be reckoned with—or just to show off—he took his men on a little parade through the town. They made off with a few horses and some of the enemy’s equipment and captured several notable Tory military men whom Marion immediately paroled to their homes. If nothing else, Marion served notice that if the British wanted to hold the second-largest population center in South Carolina, they would need to keep men and resources tied down there. “This damned Georgetown business,” as the British called it, would prove an unwelcome distraction for months to come.

Marion again attempts communication in his chain of command:

Marion reported to Gates on his little foray, saying he wished to hear from him as soon as possible, for he had received no word from him in a month. As Marion explained, this lack of information forced him to act with extreme caution lest he fall into the enemy’s hands. He closed by asking Gates to excuse his “scrawl,” as he had no table to write on in “this wild woods.” (Sometimes he lacked even paper to write on, which placed a premium on brevity.)

So here you get a little insight into JUST Marion’s world (Tier 2), not even his neighbors miles away near the St. Mark’s district closer to Kingstree, the shopkeepers in Georgetown or anywhere else in South Carolina.

If you wonder why Marion might have targeted Georgetown, you do know that as a teenager he attempted being a sailor and sailed out of Georgetown decades before right? Oh that Tier 2 knowledge sure does help with the context of things. You will find that Marion has a heart for the strategic importance of this port and what it would mean to the patriot cause. However, he was well aware of his limits and would not place his few men in harms way for his dream.

I do hope you are now even more curious about what made this militia leader tick .. if so, welcome aboard!

-SF1

Iran: Misunderstood If One Only Listens to US Government/US Media

USS Kidd (DDG-993), the never-delivered IIS Kouroush, to be part of the Shah’s upgraded Iranian Navy

Reflecting back on the late 1970s when I was an instructor in the US Navy’s Naval Training Center, it was apparent that I was more than just a little intrigued by some of the nationalities represented. I taught Aussies (quite the drinkers) and Germans (2nd place drinkers) as well as Saudis, Iraqis and Iranians. It was the Iranians I was the most curious about especially when it seemed at one moment Iran was the US’s closest ally and then during the “Hostage Crisis” broke out in November 1979, they were becoming our worst enemy.

In hindsight, with a little research and education it is apparent that the Shah’s policies did little to advance the Iranian people as the Iranian military was not ready to use these advanced US built navy warships without outside technical help. The situation was not helped by the woeful state of Iranian society which in the 1970s it was still 40%+ illiterate and it had an acute shortage of engineers and electronics technicians, let alone ones who wanted to join the navy. I had seen this first hand in teaching Iranians about radar systems.

Most people who remember 1979 saw what those in power wanted us to see. Few people at that time understood the path the Iranian people had up to that point. As David Swanson points out in this Lew Rockwell article back in 2013 about what the US public was fed:

[Myth follows]

U.S.-Iranian relations began around November 1979 when a crowd of irrational religious nutcases violently seized the U.S. embassy in Iran, took the employees hostage, tortured them, and held them until scared into freeing them by the arrival of a new sheriff in Washington, a man named Ronald Reagan.

From that day to this, according to this popular theory, Iran has been run by a bunch of subhuman lunatics with whom rational people couldn’t really talk if they wanted to. These monsters only understand force. And they have been moments away from developing and using nuclear weapons against us for decades now.

However, if the truth be told (just know that it was in 2013 when the CIA finally admitted to this):

[Truth follows]

… the CIA, operating out of that U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1953, maliciously and illegally overthrew a relatively democratic and liberal parliamentary government, and with it the 1951 Time magazine man of the year Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, because Mossadegh insisted that Iran’s oil wealth enrich Iranians rather than foreign corporations.

The CIA installed a dictatorship run by the Shah of Iran who quickly became a major source of profits for U.S. weapons makers, and his nation a testing ground for surveillance techniques and human rights abuses. The U.S. government encouraged the Shah’s development of a nuclear energy program. But the Shah impoverished and alienated the people of Iran, including hundreds of thousands educated abroad.

We are talking about a beta test of the NSA called SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police, back in the 1970s. So embedded was this surveillance network, that the CIA was able to transition Iran from the Shah’s regime to an equally abusive on based on a theocracy without hardly anyone in media seeing anything strange at all.

A secular pro-democracy revolution nonviolently overthrew the Shah in January 1979, but it was a revolution without a leader or a plan for governing. It was co-opted by rightwing religious forces led by a man who pretended briefly to favor democratic reform. The U.S. government, operating out of the same embassy despised by many in Iran since 1953, explored possible means of keeping the Shah in power, but some in the CIA worked to facilitate what they saw as the second best option: a theocracy that would substitute religious fanaticism and oppression for populist and nationalist demands.

When the U.S. embassy was taken over by an unarmed crowd the next November, immediately following the public announcement of the Shah’s arrival in the United States, and with fears of another U.S.-led coup widespread in Tehran, a sit-in planned for two or three days was co-opted, as the whole revolution had been, by mullahs with connections to the CIA and an extremely anti-democratic agenda.

They later made a deal with U.S. Republicans, as Robert Parry and others have well documented, to keep the hostage crisis going until Carter lost the 1980 presidential election to Ronald Reagan. Reagan’s government secretly renewed weapons sales to the new Iranian dictatorship despite its public anti-American stance and with no more concern for its religious fervor than for that of future al Qaeda leaders who would spend the 1980s fighting the Soviets with U.S. weapons in Afghanistan. At the same time, the Reagan administration made similarly profitable deals with Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq, which had launched a war on Iran and continued it with U.S. support through the length of the Reagan presidency…

So you see, Iran was once again used and abused by a super power like it had been before by the British and BP which profited from the immense oil discoveries from 1908 through 1953 when it enlisted the CIA to get the Shah of Iran back in power. Back in the 1800s it was Iran’s weak and greedy monarchs who where all too ready to hand over their country’s riches to the country, usually Britain or Russia, that had the deepest pockets with little regard for the well being of their subjects. These corrupt rulers, more than any other internal factor, set the stage for the violent struggle the Iranians waged for freedom, democracy, and national sovereignty throughout the first half of the 20th century.

You see, there are bits of truth out there but you will not see it in the best sellers sections of bookstores or in your history books. One recommended read is the yet to be published “Waking Up in Tehran: Love and Intrigue in Revolutionary Iran“, which is the memoir of Margot White, an American human rights activist who became an ally of pro-democracy Iranian student groups in 1977, traveled to Iran, supported the revolution, met with the hostage-takers in the embassy .. which in fact was an early version of WikiLeaks. They “continued to publish reconstructed US Embassy documents, eventually producing 54 volumes of evidence of CIA operatives … manipulating, threatening and bribing world leaders, rigging foreign elections, hijacking local political systems, shuffling foreign governments like decks of cards, sabotaging economic competitors, assassinating regional, national and tribal leaders at will, choreographing state-to-state diplomacy like cheap theater.” [ Facebook page link to this book here ]

This book, promised for the past five years, could unlock even more information about the Deep State. Maybe this is why this book has yet to be published?

In the meantime I encourage you to check out The Corbett Report article back in June 2016 which states:

It’s been an open secret that the US organized and enabled two of the three major events in modern Iranian history: the overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953 and the Shah’s subsequent reign of terror (and eventual exile)…. newly-released documents confirm that the US had a larger role than previously admitted in the third: the Islamic Revolution of 1979

-SF1

 

Where Does the Fox Go When there is Pressure from Predators?

Having lived at the edge of a swamp for twenty years, it is a well known act of nature that has fox, deer and other animals seek the refuge of a swamp for protection. Now, while this sounds like a lot of standing in water, it is not, for even these animals will seek out dry ground in the middle of swamps, creeks or rivers to offer them not just protection, but the ability to hear when predators approach.

So when Francis Marion (later to be known as the Swamp Fox) had stung the larger British forces with a prisoner release expedition, that caught Cornwallis’ attention, as well as a skirmish that resulted in 15-30 British regulars taken near Kingstree, he sensed that he needed to regroup with his men back towards where they first rendezvoused earlier in the month at Witherspoon’s Ferry and then on to land in between the Great and Little Pee Dee rivers at a place called Britton’s Neck. This became home for his forces from about 27AUG until 03SEP1780.

When in camp, Marion used letters to communicate with his forces as well as attempts at communicating with the Continental Army. The first day in camp he wrote Lt. Col. Peter Horry who was still burning boats on the Santee River to disrupt the supply lines from Charles Town to Camden to frustrate the British forces there. Marion commanded Horry to come to Britton’s Neck with as many men as possible. Being late August, there were many volunteers who had to opt to harvest crops at their farms and so by the time early September came, Marion commanded only 50 men.

Also during this time, Marion penned General Gates who had fled to North Carolina, asking “Where is the army?” Marion had no logistical support from any government or military authority and was feeling quite isolated.  Having gotten the attention of the British high command, two months AFTER Cornwallis assured Gen Clinton in New York City that South Carolina was secured and that North Carolina was next on his list.

This delay of Cornwallis due to the actions of Marion’s militia was key towards keeping the British from joining with the British forces in New York to crush Gen. George Washington’s Continentals and end the quest for all of the American colonies that were seeking independence from the British Empire.

-SF1

NOTE:

  • The book “The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution“
  • Free resources placed online by J.D. Lewis at http://www.carolana.com

Both of these resources have been invaluable in this series of posts reflecting back 238 years ago this month. Please consider these resources for your own research of these events.

 

Summer 1780 South Carolina: British Empire Occupation

1780 Charles Town Siege Map

What a difference four years makes, from the ability to repel the British Navy in Charleston Harbor in June 1776 to the ability to repel the British Army in May/June 1779 from entering Charleston, May 1780 would see a very different and sobering picture.

The British were quickly establishing forts and posts throughout the land and accepting surrender of Patriot forces from the Georgia border towns of Savannah and Augusta arching up to Ninety-Six in northwest South Carolina arching back down through Camden and on to Georgetown on the coast for well over 100 miles.

With power shifting back to the Loyalists / Tories in the state,  Whigs began accepting parole. Military men the likes of  Andrew Pickens and Andrew Williamson also were paroled while generals and politicians who surrendered at Charleston were taken out of action. William Moultrie became a POW in Charleston and Benjamin Lincoln was forced to retire to his farm in New England. Christopher Gadsden was placed in solitary confinement in St. Augustine, Florida while Henry Laurens was taken to London, England and imprisoned in the Tower of London.

August 1780 saw the twin defeats at Camden (Gates) and Fishing Creek  (Sumter) leaving only Francis Marion, age 48, available, should he choose it. Would he like others go back to their way of living and let the British back into power?

The abundance of POWs (Prisoners of War) in the region as a result of General Gates’ defeat at Camden left an opportunity that most men would have missed. A deserter shared information of over 150 Maryland Continental POWs being housed in Thomas Sumter’s abandoned home on the north savanna of the Santee River about 6 miles from Nelson’s Ferry where Francis Marion and his men are camped. This was a major river crossing north of Charleston:

This intel delivered on 24AUG1780 was NOT shared with the 60 men under Francis Marion. This was his M.O. (Mode of Operation) that he would use time and again. A surprise attack needed to be a surprise to succeed!

Stay tuned ..

SF1

Big Picture – When an Empire Starts Invading Your Region (Part 1 of 2)

 

(20AUG2018: New image replaces old image that had an error)

You probably thought I would be talking about the Middle East, or Africa, and the American Empire of the 2000s, but this will be about 1776-1780 South Carolina when kicking out an empire is starting to become a lot harder than imagined. The resolve of the British Empire to retain the American colonies was evident in the early part of the war but led to a stalemate in the northern colonies.

In the southern colonies, Savannah fell to the British in late December 1778. Efforts by the Southern Command of the Continentals, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Lincoln, to get control of Georgia back under patriot control left Charleston vulnerable to British forces elsewhere.

By April 1779, British general  Augustine Prévost, decided to move his forces from Florida and threaten Charleston. By May 11th he arrived near the port and demanded its surrender. The South Carolina legislature, ticked at the lack of northern support, decided to offer the port only if South Carolina could remain neutral during the rest of the war. So much for South Carolina being fire-eaters right?

A politician might have accepted this, but this British military commander would have nothing of that and rejected the offer.  All it took was word that the Continentals under Lincoln were heading back to Charleston to force the British back to Georgia. Charleston dodged a capture like they did back in June 1776 when the British attempted to take the port and South Carolina. John Laurens, age 24, son of the famous Henry Laurens and an aide-de-camp to General George Washington himself suggested arming 3000 black slaves to protect South Carolina from another British threat! Those who served would be freed after the war and their masters would be compensated by South Carolina for their loss of capital. Christopher Gadsden however, fearful of slave insurrection, thought that plan was dangerous on multiple fronts.

The Continental Southern Command decided that the best way to defend Charleston, was to attack and recapture Savannah, Georgia. With the assistance of the French under Admiral d’Estaing who had defeated the British in the West Indies in August 1779. The French had 4000 in their regular army and 500 free Haitian blacks to join the 3000 American Continentals including Francis Marion and his 200 men.

 Replica of French frigate

The French arrived early and never mentioned that the Americans were in route and demanded Savannah’s surrender. The British dug in and then a siege was the only other option as a direct assault was no longer possible. This strategic blunder meant that the clock was ticking as the French navy would only stay for the balance of the hurricane season before returning to its primary mission in the West Indies. By mid-October 1779 the French – American forces made their assault and 1500 died, 70% of them French. OUt of the 600 South Carolina forces, 250 died. The French promptly left and Lincoln returned to Charleston leaving Francis Marion near Beaufort, SC to guard against any possibly movement from Savannah.

The American Continentals are now on the defensive and British general Clinton in New York harbor senses an opportunity to exploit this and by December 1779 sets a plan in motion to move ships and troops into the South towards wrapping up this rebellion in the American colonies.

Part 2 of this overview will be covered in a subsequent post. A handy resource for this piece in history can be found in John Oller’s book “The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution”

SF1