Tag: life

What Do Americans Celebrate July 4th? Political Extremism

I have found it more entertaining every year to hear what Americans think of the 4th of July. Most have never read the Declaration of Independence or even understand the political dynamics of the days in 1776. Most just know it is a day off, an excuse to party. The state (government in control of this land) could not be happier.

Test drive these words and see if your average politician might be tempted to put up barb-wire fences and gun turrets around the US Capitol:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation .. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness…

Alter or abolish is the remedy for a government that no longer has the consent of the people, yet here we are.

The role of government in society has been argued for centuries, yet common sense dictates that every generation could and should struggle with the proper extent that government (i.e. force, coercion, monopoly) should try to “help”.

From an insightful article written by a man 10 years my senior, I have found some interesting “truths” for me to ponder, as well as my kids and grand-kids. For example:

.. can’t we at least be happy when the government helps needy people? No, we can’t. The more goodies the government doles out, the more violent society becomes. That’s because it becomes more and more vital to be at the head of the line for those goodies; without them, you’re left with a crippling tax bill and nothing to show for it. The higher the fraction of people’s income that comes from the government, the more intense becomes the jockeying. You do your best to smear anyone who is claiming to be more worthy of largess than you. Society becomes spontaneously pulverized and at war with itself, all thanks to “help” from the government.

A society at war with itself is advantageous to the state as this distraction can serve to allow it to not only offer to fictitiously broker peace between the warring factions while “managing” the “crisis but also allows it to weigh in violently around the globe as a world-stage bully. A hobby that the state/empire loves to do, experiment around the world with ideas for democracy which then can be modified for use domestically to enhance the “police state”.

The rights that the founding fathers were willing to be called and hunted as “traitors” for can be seen in the following list of illegitimate government actions:

  • If you are sick, you have the right to be treated by whomever you please, for a price negotiated to the satisfaction of both parties, without government intrusion.
  • If you have services you wish to offer to the world, you have the right to do so without asking permission from the government. Only if you engage in force or fraud does the government have a right to intrude.
  • The government has no right to enslave you or your children to fight and die in some trumped-up war. If the nation were ever in genuine danger, there would be no shortage of volunteers to defend it.
  • The government has no right to tax an amount approaching half of your earnings. The legitimate functions of government can be financed by a tiny fraction of that.
  • The government has no right to rob you in order to pass out money to some favored victim group. Genuine charity is voluntary, but when the government gets involved, waste and fraud and theft are built in.
  • The government has no right to force you to pay for the worthless indoctrination centers called “public schools.” That money rightfully belongs to parents so they can make an informed decision for how best to educate their children.
  • The government has no right to deprive you of the means of self-defense. Any government official who attempts to use force to do so is committing the worst order of crime and should expect an appropriate response.
  • The government has no right to pull your car over on the highway and steal any cash you may be carrying. Any criminals who participate in this practice should expect an appropriately enraged response from those they seek to rob.
  • The government has no right to condemn and raze your home to enable some private developer to build a shopping mall.
  • The government has no right to lock you up if you have committed no crime, on the pretense that some people are irrationally frightened of some microscopic bug, and therefore everyone must hide until the last traces of irrational fear have vanished.
  • The government has no right to shut down your business for any reason, unless you have been found to have engaged in force or fraud by a non-corrupt court of law.
  • The government has no right to require you to wear a diaper on your face, or to be injected with an experimental biological agent.
  • The government has no right to force you to do business with someone you don’t want to do business with. It’s not nice to be a bigot, but bigots pay for discriminating through higher labor costs, lost trade, and a general echoing back of the world to the spirit one projects onto it. For the law to criminalize bigotry merely bottles it up, where it achieves higher and higher pressure until it explodes. It also creates a lawsuit-happy nation where everybody is terminally aggrieved over some perceived slight and wants to whine about it endlessly. The right to freedom of association is absolute.
  • The government has no right to apply coercion in any way to stop or influence anything you are doing, unless you are violating someone else’s rights. A free individual runs his own life, and that’s how it’s supposed to be. Anything else is tyranny.

On July 4th, will you be celebrating your “freedom”? Asking for a friend!

Those who advocate the strategy of “elect better officials” are deluding themselves. Candidates for office always promise to be the new, different, actual, genuine representative of the people who would never violate anyone’s rights. But once they’re elected, it’s only the biggest donors they give a flying consideration about, and they have taken care to ensure that there is no way to sue them for breach of contract. They are accountable to no one but themselves and their own selfish interests, financed with what used to be your money.

Ever-larger government peddles itself as the solution to society’s problems, but intrusive, thieving government is the source of a huge fraction of society’s problems. We do of course need to deal with actual private criminals in order to keep people secure in their homes and property, but when the government turns criminal we have a much bigger problem, and we are left to ourselves to deal with it.

I do hope you see clearly that politics is not the way the people can exit from our existing ramped up tyrannical paradise.

Most people would read that and assume that violence is the only other option at this point, however, as the author of this article suggests, no, but if one is violently attacked by an illegitimate government, self defense is itself a natural right regardless of the law:

Am I in favor of violence? Quite the opposite: I vehemently oppose it. Violence is never justified except in self-defense, where it is absolutely called for in measure proportionate to the threat. That’s why when government officials initiate illegitimate violence, they should not be shocked if their violence is met by necessary self-defense. It is they, and no one else, who are responsible for the illegitimate violence they initiate, and when it is returned to them in equal measure, they have no one to blame but themselves.

When the Redcoats headed to Concord and Lexington to capture the guns the militia had stored in those locations, natural self defense rights were being violated and measures appropriate to the threat were put in place.

Remember that. Wise as serpents, harmless as doves .. and if you don’t have a sword, sell your coat and buy one .. it sure came in handy in Concord and Lexington back in 1775!

-SF1

When Politicians Underestimate the Eminent Destruction they will Trigger

We can learn from 1774/1775/1776 as well as from 1860/1861 when politicians short term thinking causes a societal rift that most times lead to violent revolutions that result in further oppression of the common man.

The last great rift in the US’s history is none other than the victor’s name for that war, the American Civil War (War Against Southern Independence). A blog post from the Abbeville Institute by John Devanny helps unpack not only what happened in the 1860s .. but also what is happening now. Consider:

The guns of that [Civil] war have long since been silenced, slavery has thankfully ceased, and racial bigotry has waned greatly in the succeeding generations, no matter what the “woke” among us believe; we who have more years and experience know better. An older conflict, however, re-emerged. One need only consult an election map broken down by county to see this ancient Anglo-American conflict in colors of red and blue, center versus periphery, court versus country. The great metropolitan cities and suburbs, college towns, the financial centers, the techno-autocrats of the left coast, and their suburbs arrayed against the small towns and rural counties of America. Neither slavery nor sectionalism nor the two-party system obscures the conflict now. A wide and deep enmity and distrust now separates Americans and reaches its icy hands to divide colleagues, friends, and families.

The year 2020, perfect vision, should make it clear, crystal clear to everyone, that there is a great divide in this land. There are those that think no one should be responsible for themselves, and for the greater good allow politicians and bureaucrats dictate society’s every move who oppose those who believe in the individual, their natural right to life, liberty and property.

So in reflection, it can be seen that in 1860, the legitimacy of the newly elected government was in doubt, as it was obvious by the rhetoric of these politicians that the northern states would accelerate the wealth transfer (via tariffs) from south to north. No longer did the south give their consent to this federal compact.

The election of 1860 and the actions and policies of Mr. Lincoln called into question the legitimacy of the federal government for many Southerners. It brought to life the warnings of John Randolph of Roanoke and John C. Calhoun, the South would be governed by the North, Southern interests, and not just slavery, were put into the hazard. For Calhoun, one of the dangers to the federal republic’s integrity was the rejection of the principle that the union’s benefits and burdens were to be shared equally by the states. The Republican Party’s motto might as well have been that of every other conqueror in history, “Woe to the conquered, spoils to the victor.” The Republican Party had no intention of resisting the temptation of indulging their libido dominandi, and with John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster, and Henry Clay removed from the scene after 1850, compromise was impossible. This being the case, Southern states concluded, one by one and often for somewhat different reasons, that the federal government lacked legitimacy. The resort to military force upon the part of the federal government only confirmed their suspicions.

Back in 1860, there was a great swath of Christians that allowed many military conflicts to avoid destruction to innocent civilian bystanders until later in the war when the likes of Sheridan, Sherman and Grant were desperate enough for total victory that their total war strategy would be used to exterminate the southern culture and then be used on the plains Indians to do the same.

Today, society is very post-Christian and also post-rational as the blog author points out. The years to come will not be pretty.

The great crisis of legitimacy that resulted in the War Between the States proved our country’s greatest and bloodiest war. For the states of Maryland and Kentucky, it was a true civil war, where brother fought brother, cousin fought cousin, yet these implacable foes did retain their humanity toward each other, ‘twas a more Christian age. All of America is now Maryland and Kentucky, circa 1860. The difference is the Court and the Country revile each other, and the lessons of the classics and Christianity will not provide restraint, not in a post-Christian and post-rational society. Three of our greatest statesmen: Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun could only forestall the awful conflict. Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Alexander Stephens, and Stephen Douglas, all able men to one degree or another, they and the others of their generation blundered the nation into a horrible conflict. What are we to make of likes of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Janet Yellen, Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, Mike Lee, William Barr and the vast sea of mediocrities and blackguards inhabiting the foggy bottom swamp upon which the Court stands? No one can seriously entertain the notion that these persons are of the caliber of the Framers, the Great Triumvirate, or the Blundering Generation. Are they even capable of discerning the mischief their policies and negligence have wrought upon the country, or the deep mistrust they have helped to sow among their countrymen? What shall future generations make of such men and women?

We can only pray that a minority, a remnant, would rise up and give hope to those who value freedom and liberty not just for themselves, but for the generations that follow.

Peace out

-SF1

Quick Money or Invest for the Future: New Polar Silk Road

Quick money is the natural inclination of those that are in “it” for themselves. Investing in the future honorably is something “other centered” people do, knowing not only their positive character traits can be an inspiration to next generations, but that any value added was accomplished without using people as if they were just cannon fodder while also holistically enriching those that follow us.

While my typical posts tend to be negative and critical, this post is one of hope. The dream of those that are anti-state, anti-war and pro-market is that peaceful trade will be the antidote to war.

My hope for my kids and grandkids is a future where wars are minimized and that life, liberty and freedom abound.

With this in mind, this particular post called “Trump’s Suprising Alaska-Canada Rail Announcement” from Matthew Ehret demonstrates the things that are in the works that the average MSM watcher misses, the good news.

For all of his limitations, President Trump has displayed a rare and invaluable quality unseen in an American president for decades: Humanity and genuine patriotism. While neocons and technocrats attempt to gain the upper hand amidst the impending blowout of the $1.5 quadrillion derivatives bubble called the western economy, a new epoch of serious nation building has emerged with the Russia-China alliance and Belt and Road Initiative, which has extended development corridors, industrial zones and mass infrastructure led by rail throughout Asia, Africa and increasingly into the Russian Arctic under the Polar Silk Road.

Rare praise for what President Trump is up to that gains little attention in the press that is infatuated with the here and now instead of the future of the people of the US, Canada and yes even Russia and China.

What is also missed by MSM has been Trump’s behind the scenes efforts towards an economic effort, verses BushII/Obama style “bombing for democracy” which is code for war for quick profits to the MIC (Military Industrial Complex). Here is Trump in noble action in SEP2020 towards healing the scars (thanks Clinton administration) in the Kosovo/Serbia region since the 2008 conflict:

Trump’s normalisation agreement provides for increased economic collaboration between Kosovo and Serbia, particularly in the areas of transport and infrastructure. It also requires the two countries to increase the work they have been doing on issues of missing persons, refugees and internally displaced persons from the 1990s Kosovo war.

On the back of this success President Trump made this ‘Polar Silk Road’ announcement (do note that I am not convinced that the “Lincoln Principles of Government” has much merit, since his “Might” was made “Right” in his own eyes after the seven southern states seceded in late 1860 and early 1861, but I digress), Matthew Ehret shares HIS thoughts:

In its essential character, this Multipolar alliance represents a form of thinking and action which are much more in alignment with discoverable principles of natural law (premised not on “Might Makes Right but rather “Right makes Might” as enunciated famously by the great Chinese President and revolutionary in his Three Principles of the People (modelled on his studies of Lincoln’s principles of government) where he said: “The rule of Right respects benevolence and virtue, while the rule of Might only respects force and utilitarianism. The rule of Right always influences people with justice and reason, while the rule of Might always oppresses people with brute force and military measures.”

Todays potential re-emergence of the Alaska-Canada Railway which would be driven under a pro-Pacific and pro-Arctic development model represents the first genuine display of this paradigm in North America in decades.

This is not innovative or new, as the balance of Matthew Erhet’s article demonstrates, but is instead a visionary look ahead that could help to make America great again.

Ever since the days of the sale of Alaska from Russia to the USA in 1867, it was understood by leading statesmen of both nations that an inevitable next phase in human society’s evolution would involve extending the U.S. Trans Continental Railway through Canada, into Alaska and thence into Russia and Asia via the Bering Strait rail tunnel. This project had received fervent support from such figures as Russian Prime Minister Sergei Witte, Colorado’s Governor William Gilpin and even Czar Nicholas II who commissioned American engineers to conduct a feasibility study in 1906. These stories were told in full in my recent reports The Missed Chance of 1867, and The Real Story Behind the Alaska Purchase.

It is indeed heartening to see glimpses of peace and commerce offset that of war and refugees. Thomas Jefferson would be proud:

Peace out.

-SF1

BLM – The 2020 Version of the GOP’s 1860’s Version .. Prove Me Wrong

I hope by now y’all know that Black Lives Matter movement (BLM) you see today does not operate under the premise that black lives matter. This movement is only using the slogan as a front for their own purposes and agenda, since much of their violence was aimed at the very lives (Black community and persons) they claim “matter”.

This has happened before you know, even in these United States when in 1861 Lincoln reacted violently to the exit of seven sovereign states from his mythical holy “union”. You see, Lincoln’s idea of union was not the same as the founder’s view, as he said it was “a family, bound indissolubly together by the most intimate organic bonds”. Lincoln’s rhetoric helped framed this to be first a religious war to violently bring these seven states back and when that failed to motivate the masses being slaughtered on the battlefields, a religious war to “free” the slaves. Black lives all of a sudden mattered!

Lincoln’s initial effort was to transform the united States as a federated association to a monolithic and divinized entity which must be worshiped, be permanent, be unquestioned and all powerful. The zealous aspect of this narrative demonstrated itself as early as late 1861 where in Missouri, this conflict’s ramp-up had Union Brig. James H. Lane say:

We believe in a war of extermination .. I want to see every foot of ground in Jackson, Cass and Bates counties burned over .. everything laid waste ..

On 23SEP1861 his artillery opened fire on Saint Clara Country courthouse and soon the rest of the town of Osceola was ablaze as well when Union soldiers then robbing the bank and downing large quantities of whiskey.

By JAN1862 Union cavalry burned 45 buildings in Dayton, MO, 42 in Rose Hill, MO and 150 private homes in Johnson County, so do you see the pyromaniac tendencies that make BLM and the GOP-led Union terrorists so similar?

If the religious zealot led BLM movement in 2020 is allowed to continue, you will see similarities to what happened to Fredericksburg, VA in DEC1862 happen in most all urban areas of the USA. The Union Army bombed the city of Fredericksburg instead of shelling the Confederate armies that controlled the heights above the city. The Union soldiers then sacked the city itself. Sounds of screams, broken chinaware, splintering furniture was followed by the scattering of men’s and women’s clothes in the streets, letters and documents pulled from desks as the men drank liquor found and continued unrestrained in smashing doors and windows with ZERO concerns for private property. This is trademark Marxism which emphasizes that all property is collective and none is to be private. This is how BLM members today justify what they do in Portland, Chicago and Philadelphia.

This link between Lincoln’s GOP and Marx should be of no surprise to anyone who had a history class, unless the history taught was not complete. Everyone should be aware that Lincoln and Karl Marx personally communicated and had a sort of mutual admiration society. Upon being reelected, Lincoln received a letter from Marx saying, “We congratulate the American people upon your reelection by a large majority.” Lincoln responded with a thank-you letter. (If you want more background to the connection, this expensive book ($150USD) can give you the details)

As the war effort necessitated Lincoln transitioning the goal of the war from “keeping the union” to “freeing the slaves”, the atrocities accelerated.

The fires that Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman used to remove Atlanta as an obstacle to his objectives resulted in piles of corpses, black and white, women and children. But Sherman could easily look past this as he saw a “greater good” beyond this “collateral damage” in writing to his wife:

… extermination, not of soldiers alone, that is the least part of the trouble, but the people [of the South] ..

Later in life, Sherman would quip, “the only good Indian is a dead Indian”. Sherman boasted in his letters to Grant that in one day he had set fires to 2700 barns, 70 flour and wheat mills and stole or killed 7000 cattle and sheep.

Gen. Phillip Sheridan with his 35,000 man army unopposed in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia pillaged and plundered, killed and burnt so that Grant’s order to make this valley a “barren waste” might be satisfied:

.. the land should be left so vacant that crows flying over would need to pack their lunches ..

If black lives really mattered, why did the Union Army destroy everything that could have been used by them to avoid starvation in the months after the war? Do note that few if any slaves went north with their “rescuers” and Sherman himself had bridges burnt behind his army to prevent the blacks from following. Black lives didn’t really matter, but the narrative inspired the masses to really behind that thought. Sound familiar?

Post war the GOP used the blacks as their political force in the south and stoked race warfare to ensure societal division not just then, but for generations to come. In 1877 when the GOP finally was caught in their web of lies, deceit and crimes within government, did they finally abandon the manipulation of the blacks for political power in the south. Used and abused, the story of Marxist / totalitarianism that relies on separating people into groups/classes for their divide and conquer schemes.

Liberty, personal property rights and the pursuit of happiness are never the order of the day when the GOP of the 1860s or the Bolsheviks of the 1910s or the Nazis of 1930s or the Democrat-aligned/BLMers of the 2020s come to town.

Time to defend yourself, your loved ones and friends from those that see no value in your life or property. The communist Kymar Rouge who ruled Cambodia for a time had a line:

Losing you is not a loss. Keeping you is no specific gain

Socialist Germany looked at Jews this way. Marxist Union troops looked at Southerners this way. Communist Soviet Union saw Ukrainians this way.

The BLM in 2020 looks at you this way.

Be on guard in these days but have hope in the One who can allow a handful of people, the “weak” to make a difference in the days, months and years to come. Train your kids well and open their eyes.

Peace out

-SF1

08NOV1780: Tarleton Can’t Catch Francis Marion – Inadvertently Calls Him a Fox

When I last updated y’all on Marion’s activities in the fall of 1780, Cornwallis had “green lighted” Tarleton via his commander at Camden, George Turnball.

From Camden on November 1 Turnbull wrote to Tarleton at Winnsboro, imploring him to gather up his Legion to hunt down Marion. Tarleton rarely paid any compliments to his rebel adversaries, but he respected Marion, later writing that “Mr. Marion, by his zeal and abilities, shewed himself capable of the trust committed to his charge.” … He [Tarleton] welcomed the opportunity to pursue him, and Cornwallis approved the operation, telling Tarleton, “I … most sincerely hope you will get at Mr. Marion.”

Oller, John. The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution

The reason for the “green-light” to Cornwallis’ favorite field commander was the impact, both physical and psychological, that Francis Marion and his militia had in South Carolina and in the Southern Theatre of Operations of the Revolutionary War just since August 1780:

Cornwallis was desperate to end Marion’s dominance in the country between the Santee and Pee Dee Rivers. Nisbet Balfour, the commandant at Charleston, worried that unless further measures were taken, all communication between Charleston and Cornwallis’s army would be “at an end.” Marion was bleeding the British to death by a thousand cuts.

Oller, John. The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution

By now, Banistre Tarleton had the name “Bloody Ban” based on reports from how his men at the conclusion of their 150 mile / 54 hour pursuit of Col. Abraham Buford who was late to reinforce Charleston in May 1780 so Buford and his 350 Virginia Continentals were on the run toward North Carolina. This event was called “Buford’s Massacre” and set the stage for a reversal of alliances for the people of the colony of South Carolina over the coming months! The words “Tarleton’s quarter” (meaning take no prisoners) became legend and his character traits were woven into the person called “Colonel Tavington” in the movie ‘The Patriot'[2000].

Tarleton and his Green Dragoons along with a force of Tories called Harrison’s Rangers set out from Camden on 05NOV1780 moving south based on Intel they received that had Marion’s militian in the High Hills of the Santee. They did not find Marion there as he was but but thirty miles farther south near Nelson’s Ferry with two hundred men on the evening of 05NOV1780.

By 07NOV, Tarleton and his forces moved to the plantation of the recently widowed Dorothy Richardson, whose late husband, Brigadier General Richard Richardson, had been the victorious Whig commander in the Snow Campaign in 1775. This was no coincidence to camp right at a famous patriot’s home. Intel continued to play an important role as Tarleton learned that Marion was camped now just sixteen miles south. Marion too heard reports of Tarleton’s presence.

Marion and his men laid an ambush at Nelson’s Ferry and waited until night expecting Tarleton to cross there but was disappointed as Tarleton backtracked as though he himself sensed a trap. Marion then maneuvered to within three miles of Tarleton’s camp, intending to surprise him. Both of these leaders possessed a high level of intelligence in the ways of military strategy.

Tarleton was crafty as well: he spread the rumor that his main body had returned to Camden and sent out small patrols with instructions to show little signs of fear by leaving camps abruptly with food still cooking in order to draw Marion to attack. He lit bonfires at Richardson’s Plantation designed to give the impression that he was burning the home of a revered patriot family. In the meantime he wheeled out two small artillery pieces capable of a kind of firepower Marion’s men were not used to facing. Then, knowing Marion’s penchant for making surprise attacks at night, Tarleton hid in the woods with his force of four hundred and waited for Marion to come to him.

Oller, John. The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution

It is about to get real at this point. Knowing that the smoke from the fires would be good bait to draw Marion’s militia forces into this trap, all Tarleton had to do was wait.

At this critical point, the widow of Gen. Richard Richardson prompted her son, the 39 year old Richard Richardson Jr. to escape the plantation’s main home undetected and warn the militia of this trap. Major Richardson’s Intel was that  Tarleton had 100 cavalry and 300 dragoons plus two artillery pieces and that one of Marion’s men deserted to the British/Tory forces and was now Tarleton’s guide in the area.

In light of this brush with death for his men and himself, Marion decided to separate himself from this force by taking his men in the dark on a ride through the swamps toward safety near Jack’s Creek.

The next morning, Tarleton is surprised that the trap was not sprung. This “cat-n-mouse” game was getting real and getting intense!

… he [Tarleton] sent a few men to find out why. They brought back a prisoner who had managed to escape from Marion’s brigade during the previous night’s mad dash. He informed them that Marion would have attacked him had some “treacherous women” (the widow Richardson and others) not smuggled out an emissary to warn Marion of Tarleton’s actual number. Tarleton immediately ordered his men to their arms and mounts, but they soon discovered that Marion had already flown from his camp at Jack’s Creek in the direction of Kingstree.

Oller, John. The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution

This started a day of adventure for both of these forces as Tarleton moved his men 26 miles through swamps in seven hours while Marion’s men racked up 35 miles in staying out of range of their pursuers.

As Tarleton reported to Cornwallis, due to Marion’s head start and “the difficulties of the country,” he was unable to catch him. He abandoned the chase at Ox Swamp, outside of present-day Manning, which was wide, mucky, and without roads for passage. It was there Tarleton is said to have uttered the words that gave Marion his immortal nickname. “Come my boys! Let us go back, and we will soon find the Gamecock [Thomas Sumter]. But as for this damned old fox, the Devil himself could not catch him.”

Oller, John. The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution

Now you might think that Tarleton would just move on back toward Camden and try to capture militia leader Thomas Sumter, however, a man of Tarelton’s character would ensure that his frustration would be felt on the innocent people and homes along the path toward Camden:

Tarleton’s frustration was evident from his actions immediately afterward. As he told Cornwallis, he “laid… waste” to all the houses and plantations of the rebels around Richardson’s Plantation and Jack’s Creek. (As usual, Cornwallis turned a blind eye to such depredations.)

Tarleton paid a visit back to the widow Richardson’s home and, as Marion reported to Gates, “beat” her to “make her tell where I was.” Doing what he had earlier pretended to do in order to lure Marion to battle, Tarleton then burned Mrs. Richardson’s home and some of her cattle, destroyed all her corn, and left her without so much as a change of clothes.

From Nelson’s Ferry to Camden he destroyed the homes and grain of thirty plantation owners.

Worst of all, Marion reported, Tarleton had “behaved to the poor women he has distressed with great barbarity.… It is beyond measure distressing to see the women and children sitting in the open air round a fire without a blanket, or any clothing but what they had on, and women of family, and that had ample fortunes; for he spares neither Whig nor Tory.” *

Oller, John. The Swamp Fox: How Francis Marion Saved the American Revolution

So we see here that Tarleton had two points of weakness, pride and revenge. The trait of revenge, especially on innocent women and children would help turn the tide of the “civil war” inside South Carolina itself, drying up Tory sympathies, and for many generations instilling the thought that war taken to the civilian population itself was not only uncivilized, but also brought “blowback”.

The empire of today (United States) could learn well from this lesson of the past. That thought though will have to be captured in yet another future post. As we leave November 1780, we find the British’s top performing field commander frustrated by militia whose leader now has a new name. Although the name Swamp Fox will not emerge until decades after the conclusion of this war, there is something to be said for this moment in time when guerrilla fighting techniques would be the deciding factor as to why the American Revolution did not end in 1780.

As a result, are we thankful today on Thanksgiving Day 2018? I know I am. Thank you Francis Marion and your faithful men in your stand against the empire of your day. You have given the generations that follow hope in the love, liberty and life that your efforts inspired. Amen.

-SF1