Note: Several officers and the Webmaster of our ARRT attended the Conference and all pronounced it to be "Excellent".
Don Hagist -- A Thousand Lashes
The idea behind lashing soldiers for breaches of order and
discipline is you want it "to remain corporal punishment [as opposed to]
capital punishment," Don Hagist said. The miscreant needs to return to the
ranks.
The editor of the Journal
of the American Revolution demonstrated and explained to attendees at the eighth annual conference
on the American Revolution in Williamsburg the different meanings of the word
"lash."
One way would be to use a whip cord made of linen, inflicting punishment by not sidelining indefinitely or killing the soldier being disciplined. "It was a different kind of whip," using fiber rather than leather in many cases. Or it could be referring to a crouper strap for horses.
"You don't want the lash to be too severe" because
the idea is to return the recalcitrant or misbehaving soldier to the ranks.
Instructions would be :"Let the straps fall on shoulders,
not the neck ... avoid ribs," but all right on the posterior.
Hagist said that in administering punishment the season of the year was a
consideration. "Autumn is the most
sickly" and better to do it outdoors, but not immediately following a
march.
Although there were British regimental "Punishment
Books," naming soldiers and the sentence," they have proven
"phenomenonally rare" to searchers trying to find them.
Even when the record is discovered, Hagist added,
"often the sentences were not carried out." The punishment could have been ordered
stopped by the attending surgeon or a commander issuing a pardon before the
punishment began.
In his search of British Army records, he said. "there
is no correlation between lashing and dying, nor is there a correlation between
lashing and discharge from service.
What the evidence he has seen and studies
shows:"discipline wasn't harsh for everybody."
-- John Grady
Christian DiSigna --
Joseph Warren
Christian DiSpigna, who spent years researching Dr. Joseph
Warren's role in the years leading up to the Revolution and his taking to arms
against the British on Breed's Hill, said, in effect, when George Washington
was named commander of the United Colonies' Continental Army in June 1775
"he has to fill Warren's shoes" as a military leader.
Warren, a physician by training, was a leader in the field --
directing Benedict Arnold to head toward Fort Ticonderoga in mid-1775 and
behind the scenes agitating politically for "the Cause."
The adoption
of the Suffolk Resolves in September 1774 decrying British actions in Boston
and Massachusetts were in large part attributable to him.
On his order, Paul
Revere rode with the resolutions to the First Continental Congress to inform those
delegates what was at stake possibly for all.
And as president of the
provincial congress, he sent Revere and William Dawes on their ways the next
year to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams of the British movement from the
city to arrest them and seize weapons at Concord.
Yet Di Spigna said the remaining record of Warren's life,
his thoughts, and writings is sparse, leading to his importance being largely
overlooked.
In reviewing Warren's life, "we can't overlook these [Masonic]
charitable ties" in his political life. He was a past grandmaster in
Massachusetts at the time of his death in the earthworks on Breed's Hill, where
he was first buried.
By dying in the assault on Breed's Hill, Warren can be
deemed the "Founding Martyr," DiSpigna said.
He added that as the years passed the
public's attention to Warren's contributions to the Revolution waned, but time
and again, his remains were moved from to different locations and eventually to
a family vault in Forest Hills Cemetery in efforts to honor him.
-- John Grady
James Kirby Martin --
Benedict Arnold's New London Raid
In assessing Benedict Arnold's actions at New London and
what followed at Fort Griswold, often labeled a "massacre" of
surrendering Americans, James Kirby Martin, the author of numerous articles and
books on the Revolution, said the question has to be asked: "Did Arnold adhere to the
"rules of civilized conduct" in warfare as they were identified in
his time?"
Citing Hugo Grotius, of the Netherlands, and Emmerich de
Vattel, of Switzerland, both of whom wrote extensively on that question in the
17th century in the wake of the Thirty Years War with its 8 million to 11
million lives lost, Martin said measures of judgment on Arnold that day needed
to include:
Was the focus of the raid, in particular, on combatants not
civilians?;
Was the action proportional to any events leading up to the
raid?;
Did the action meet the terms of "wartime
necessity" by employing "legitimate military actions?"
Martin said that Arnold's actions met those tests.
He added that ambiguity surrounds many military actions
then, like privateering on the high seas under a letter of marque and now as
well like "desolation warfare" making terrain uninhabitable and
burning houses and barns to force an enemy to the ground.
Martin said in answer to a question that "both sides
were looting" in New London, and Arnold tried to rein his troops in.
-- John Grady
