How do you think my protagonists Sophie Barton and Michael Stoddard would respond if they were suddenly transported from the American Revolution to 21st-century Miami? Check out my tongue-in-cheek response in this fun interview of me on Raquel Reyes’s Miami blog.
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I admit to watching the Starz production of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander, set in eighteenth-century Scotland, with one eye on the characters’ clothing. I’ve been a history buff and Revolutionary War reenactor for so long that I cannot help it. Hollywood revels in dressing actors for historical productions. However, we all know better than to believe that those costumes are completely accurate. Right?
Here’s the character Claire Randall out of doors. Most of her clothing is fairly accurate for the time period. However none of the three pieces around her neck and shoulders is correct. For an eighteenth-century woman in the out-of-doors, especially a woman who isn’t wearing a shawl, cape, or cloak, Claire is missing several very important articles of clothing. Common sense articles of clothing.
The bodices of eighteenth-century gowns tended to be low-cut, so a woman wore a neck kerchief for modesty when she left her home—and often when she was indoors. The neck kerchief came in several variations and could be worn outside the bodice or tucked into it. Outdoors, it protected a woman’s chest from exposure to cold and blistering sunlight. It also shielded her skin from the bites of disease-carrying insects such as mosquitoes and ticks.
She wore a mobcap to cover most of her hair. The mobcap prevented the buildup of grease and dirt in her hair and kept the hair from having to be washed often. It also saved her from spending a lot of time fussing over her hair every day. Indoors, on certain occasions, she might opt out of wearing the mobcap. But when she went outside, the combination of the mobcap and a hat kept the sun out of her eyes and off the top of her head, and it acted as a barrier to those nasty bugs. In the winter, it helped keep her head warm.
I’ve reenacted in living history events in the summer and winter. The kerchief does protect my chest. The mobcap and hat do protect my head. Eighteenth-century people knew what they were doing by using all that clothing. People of Western cultures in the twenty-first century think nothing of Claire’s bare head and bare chest. However if she were truly in the eighteenth century, venturing outside without a neck kerchief and at least a mobcap would tell people that she’d lost her wits, or was sexually promiscuous, or both.
Enjoy those lovely “Outlander” costumes. But do remember to take them with a grain of salt.
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Relevant History welcomes back Don Hagist, an independent researcher specializing in the demographics and material culture of the British Army in the American Revolution. He maintains a blog about British common soldiers and has published a number of articles in academic journals. He has written several books including The Revolution’s Last Men: The Soldiers Behind the Photographs and British Soldiers, American War, both from Westholme Publishing, and is on the editorial board of Journal of the American Revolution. Don works as an engineering consultant in Rhode Island and also writes for several well-known syndicated and freelance cartoonists. For more information, check his Facebook page.
*****
The American Revolution was fought by thousands of soldiers, as most wars are, and as in most wars only a few of the participants achieved fame. As individuals, most soldiers played only minor roles in a long and wide-ranging war, but together their efforts were vital in shaping the course of events. With few exceptions, it was the leaders and policymakers who were remembered, while the soldiers remained almost anonymous.
A quirk of fate changed that for six men who were only teenagers when they served in the war that created their nation. In 1864 an innocuous budget report from the Federal government revealed that only a handful of Revolutionary War veterans were still alive and collecting pensions. When a photographer and a clergyman-activist learned how few of these men remained, the race was on to capture their images and words before the opportunity was lost.
The result of this quest by photographer Nelson Augustus Moore and Reverend Elias Brewster Hillard was the book Last Men of the Revolution. Published at the end of 1864, it contained biographies of the last six Revolutionary War pensioners and, more remarkably, a photograph of each one.
New technology for old veterans
The book was innovative. While daguerreotype photography was already a quarter-century old, the technology to make prints from photographic negatives had been introduced only a few years before 1864. There was still no way to put a photograph onto a printed page, so each copy of Last Men of the Revolution contained individual prints of each man pasted by hand onto the pages. It represented the very latest technology for sharing images, capitalizing on the sensation of photographic image collecting that was sweeping the nation.
The book had great visual appeal, but the biographical content was sorely lacking. Reverend Hillard interviewed five of the six men but did no research to corroborate their garbled tales based on fading memories. Indeed, his goal was not to record history but to inspire the current nation, at the time torn by civil war, with the stories of heroes that had seen first-hand the nation’s founding.
Finding the soldiers behind the photographs
The images captured in 1864 have continued to captivate generations of history enthusiasts ever since. Unfortunately, the error-ridden biographies that were published with those photographs have also been repeated without question, even though much of the information ranges from implausible to impossible. The book has been reprinted verbatim several times, and the images with summaries of the biographies are readily available on the Internet. A new study of these six veterans has been long overdue.
Two years ago, Westholme Publishing asked me if I could research the men profiled in the 1864 book and compose a new volume telling their real stories. It was an interesting proposition; although I’ve researched and written extensively about British soldiers in the American Revolution, that’s a completely different discipline than researching American soldiers. The organization and administration of the army was completely different, and the archival sources used to study it is also completely different. But, unwilling to turn down a book project, I accepted the challenge.
It was quite an adventure. Extensive research revealed a wealth of previously unpublished information about each man and also a new perspective on the 1864 photographs and the 1864 book. It has finally come together in The Revolution’s Last Men: the Soldiers Behind the Photographs (Westholme, March 2015). This new volume presents all of the information that was in the original book but gives it a thorough examination using the pension depositions of the soldiers themselves and men who served alongside them, as well as muster rolls, orderly books, and a host of other primary sources. This is the most complete look at each soldier ever published.
To supplement the textual information, The Revolution’s Last Men includes six original drawings of the men as they may have looked when they were young soldiers, based on extensive study of period military clothing and equipment. Rendered by artist Eric H. Schnitzer, these images put into perspective the photographs taken six decades later, providing new visual context for each man’s military service. [Suzanne Adair’s note: Photograph and sketch are of William Hutchings.]
The research for The Revolution’s Last Men revealed many unexpected surprises. Besides additional recollections by the veterans not published in 1864, I discovered several photographs taken by other photographers after the men became celebrities due to the publication of the original book. These photographs, along with the drawings and extensive text, make The Revolution’s Last Men a valuable study of memory as well as of history. Creating this book was a remarkably rewarding experience for me, and I hope that you’ll find it enjoyable and informative both to read and to look at.
[Suzanne Adair’s note #2: Don accidentally sent the wrong drawing for William Hutchings. Here is the correct sketch.
*****
A big thanks to Don Hagist.
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Welcome to the Christmas party blog hop, and thank you for stopping by. Have you ever wondered how people from other times and places celebrated the winter holiday? Each of the authors on the list at the end of this post is sharing an idea about it today. Some authors also have giveaway prizes for you. Visit the blogs, and enjoy this festive season with us.
*****
It certainly wasn’t “all work and no play” for King George III’s army when it attempted to subdue that pesky insurrection in North America. The Brits did their share of “entertaining” while on American soil. Mischianza, anyone?
Some Brits qualified as true party animals, and one of those party animals, Banastre Tarleton, commanded the British Legion, a provincial unit that wreaked havoc among the patriots living in the southern colonies in 1780 and 1781. A drinker, gambler, and womanizer, Tarleton had goofed off at University College, Oxford and blown through his inheritance before hitting his stride as a light cavalry officer during the American Revolution.
Tarleton is a secondary character in my novel Camp Follower: A Mystery of the American Revolution, set in late 1780 and early 1781. (Here’s why I included him.) And because Tarleton was the kind of fellow who’d never have passed up seasonal festivities, there’s a December winter holiday feast and dance in Camp Follower to give readers an idea of how a Crown forces unit might have celebrated in the backcountry of South Carolina. It’s a Yule party, not a Christmas party—and here’s why. Writing that scene gave me the opportunity to show another side to Tarleton and the Legion: soldiers at rest, not fighting their way through the backcountry. A devastating battle would come all too soon for them on 17 January 1781 and is depicted in the book’s climax.
Here’s an excerpt from the Yule party in Camp Follower:
The morning of the twenty-fourth, day of the Yule celebration, [Helen] awoke to the aroma of roasted hog and root vegetables, slow-cooked the night before in pits…A substantial amount of cooked hog and vegetables, baked apples and pears, and cornbread vanished before dark — largesse from Tarleton, distributed among the rank and file.
After nightfall, in a torch-rimmed field north of the manor house, Helen, her garnets at her throat and ears, wandered from a huge bowl of mulled cider to a huge bowl of waes hail to a supply of the best wines from market…During the first course of onion soup, she was seated next to Fairfax, but they ignored each other, and the fellow on her other side stayed sober long enough to hold a lucid conversation about deer hunting…The soup was cleared away, a bell rang, and the men scrambled to switch seats, to the laughter and surprise of the ladies. Broiled bass appeared on the tables, and Helen got to hear about horse racing and advantages of various firearms from a cornet and a captain…
The bass vanished, the bell rang again, and Tarleton, ruddy-cheeked, wine goblet in hand, redirected an officer of the militia so he could plant himself next to Helen and scowl at her. Gold and braid on his uniform winked in the candlelight. “You’ve no idea how I’ve had to fight my way over here…Madam, I need your advice on a delicate matter. With whom should I dance the first tune?”
Giveaway prize: Want a book to read? Use the comment form to tell me something you learned from this blog post and what your 2014 holiday plans are like. I’ll send you an ebook copy of Camp Follower, nominated for two awards. Make sure you provide your name and an accurate email address so I can contact you. Offer expires 31 December 2014.
Happy holidays to all my readers. And don’t forget to check out the authors’ posts on the following list.
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Relevant History welcomes Michael C. McCloskey, who has spent the last ten years studying American History at Millersville University and received his MA in 2013. His focus is on the colonial Atlantic world, and the development of American identity. Currently courting several doctorial programs, Michael looks forward to the day he will have a classroom of his own. He has also been active in Public History programs serving as historic interpreter at the Army Heritage Education Center during their time line events and guest lecturing on revolution and its causes, bringing alive the past for the next generation. For more information, connect with him on his web site at Millersville University.
*****
In looking at the American War for Independence, one of the more uncommon aspects is that of the United States Navy, and no one was more famed of that arm than Commodore John Paul Jones. Perhaps most famous for uttering the immortal words “I have not yet begun to fight…” in the Battle at Flamborough Head on the eastern coast of England touching the North Sea.[1] The war had not been going well for the colonists in 1779, and they needed a victory to help bolster their spirits and carry them on to fight until Cornwallis was defeated in 1781 at Yorktown, Virginia. That victory came in the form of Commodore Jones at the Battle of Flamborough Head. Outgunned and even in the face of treachery by one of his captains, he managed to escape what could have been an ignominious end and emerge the hero in a contest which seemed mismatched once the engagement began.[2]
The Engagement Begins
On the afternoon of 23 September 1779, a flotilla of supply troops arriving from the mouth of the Thames River was ferrying material from England for the war effort against the Americans.[3] It was just such a prize that Commodore Jones was waiting for. In the small squadron commanded by Commodore Jones was the Alliance commanded by Captain Pierre Landaise, the Pallas commanded by Captain Henry Lundt, and the cutter Vengeance. Coming around the cape was the H.M.S. Serapis of 50 guns commanded by Captain Richard Pearson RN. The Countess of Scarborough was not far along and commanded by Captain Thomas Piercy with a large number of ships in tow carrying supplies for the British.[4]
By 6:00 p.m. the battle began with Commodore Jones having the Stars and Stripes hoisted up the mainmast revealing his true intent. Even though the Bonhomme Richard was outgunned and facing a much more maneuverable enemy (the Serapis had a copper lined hull making her much faster and maneuverable than the Richard), Jones was relying on his squadron to help even the odds.[5] In the case of the Alliance, that was a trust misplaced, as we shall see. The other two vessels did what they could against the Countess of Scarborough keeping her busy while the Richard and Serapis faced off for the next three to four hours. Early on in the engagement, the Richard wound up running her bowsprit into the hull of the Serapis while maneuvering to gain advantage. Captain Pearson asked Commodore Jones if he was going to strike his colors. To which the immortal words were uttered “I have not yet begun to fight!” At which point the engagement renewed.[6]
A Questionable Alliance
While the Richard and Serapis were dancing with each other in the waters off the coast of England, the Alliance was keeping her distance, waiting to cut in, but not with the expected party. Meanwhile the Pallas engaged the convoy and the Countess of Scarborough, and the Vengeance could do little but watch the battle unfold. With the Richard and Serapis now locked, broadside to broadside, the Alliance began to maneuver closer, but instead of firing on the H.M.S. Serapis, Captain Landaise fired on the Richard! Not just once, but three times. It turns out, according to historian Samuel Eliot Morison, the commander of the Alliance had designs of sinking the Richard and taking the Serapis as a prize for himself and getting Commodore John Paul Jones out of the way in the same move, a shrewd but treacherous act indeed.[7] This act seemed to be a streak through many of the foreign commanders subordinated under Jones’s command throughout his life and demonstrates the complexity of the politics he had to navigate throughout his career and most especially during his final command in Russia.
The Alliance notwithstanding, Commodore Jones and Bonhomme Richard held on to the Serapis and both railed away at one another. Jones’s iron determination and sheer will seemed to keep the Richard afloat as the engagement got hot. Even many under the command of Jones on the Richard itself were ready to call for quarter and ask for terms. Commodore Jones did not allow for such an action. Finally at 10:30 in the evening, the mainmast of the Serapis began to give way, and Captain Pearson struck his colors. No easy task, as Morison relates that he nailed his colors to the mast, and owing to the loss of men to killed and wounded, he had to climb up top to strike them himself.[8] When Commodore Jones received Captain Pearson upon the deck of the Bonhomme Richard to accept his surrender, the ceremonies of war during the period were well observed, honor being done to both sides in the battle, much in contrast to the reputation of John Paul Jones as a pirate, rapacious and without mercy.
Consequences
After the battle, the Bonhomme Richard was so damaged that she wound up sinking the next morning, giving her last full measure to provide Commodore Jones with his victory that day. But what did that victory demonstrate? It lay plain to the people and government of England that a war fought an ocean away can be brought to their own back yard. The world was no longer as large as many thought it was. Also, while this convoy did have the good fortune to escape to a safe port while the Serapis and the Countess of Scarborough did their job engaging Jones and his small fleet, England’s merchant fleet ran the same risk as American colonial merchant ships, that of being taken as a prize of war. As a result the merchant fleets cried for naval protection.[9] England now had to reevaluate where to place its resources when mapping out a strategy. The war became “not so distant” anymore.
Footnotes
1. Barbara W. Tuchman, The First Salute, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988), p. 83
2. Samuel Eliot Morison, John Paul Jones, (New York: Time Incorporated, 1959), pp. 234, 235; Tuchman, The First Salute, p.110
3. Gardner W. Allen, A Naval History of the American Revolution, Vol 2, (New York: Russell & Russell Inc, 1962), pp. 456, 457
4. Morison, pp. 224-226
5. Ibid, pp. 226, 227
6. Tuchman, p. 83; Morison, p. 231
7. Morison, p. 235
8. Tuchman , p. 83; Morison, p. 237
******
A big thanks to Michael McCloskey!
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“An excellent offering from a skilled novelist” — Armchair Interviews
Looking for a great deal on an award-nominated, historical holiday read? Camp Follower, stand-alone third book of my “Mysteries of the American Revolution” trilogy, is on sale 28 – 30 November. The book was nominated for the Daphne du Maurier award and the Sir Walter Raleigh award, and it shows the Yule and Christmas Day celebrations of 1780 for the British Legion, encamped in the South Carolina backcountry.
Here are the sales and where you’ll find them:
Please spread the word. Many thanks.
~~
A deadly assignment. A land poisoned by treachery and battle. She plunged in headfirst.
Late in 1780, the publisher of a loyalist magazine in Wilmington, North Carolina offers an amazing assignment to Helen Chiswell, his society page writer. Pose as the widowed, gentlewoman sister of a British officer in the Seventeenth Light Dragoons, travel to the encampment of the British Legion in the Carolina backcountry, and write a feature on Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton. But Helen’s publisher has secret reasons for sending her into danger. And because Helen, a loyalist, has ties to a family the redcoats suspect as patriot spies, she comes under suspicion of a brutal, brilliant British officer. At the bloody Battle of Cowpens, Helen must confront her past to save her life.
Flogging as a form of punishment was dispensed by company drummers during the American Revolution. In my recent post on flogging, I included the following statement:
…the desired outcome of flogging wasn’t usually the recipient’s death. That meant that often the flogging was delivered by a boy who didn’t have the upper body strength of a man.
A history buff queried me about the statement, said that all drummers were adults, and wanted to know where I’d gotten the rationale about using boys to go easy on the punishment.
One place I’d seen it was in Dr. Tony Scotti’s 2002 book Brutal Virtue: The Myth and Reality of Banastre Tarleton. Here’s the quote from his book:
Starting in 1740, some restraints appeared during floggings. Soldiers lived through large numbers of lashes, say one thousand for desertion, because they were administered at intervals over several weeks and supervised by a surgeon. Furthermore, drummers now carried out the punishment. The rationale for all this is simple. Aside from being more humane, it saved a valuable if momentarily wayward soldier for future service. In addition, a drummer boy of thirteen or fourteen years of age did not have the upper body strength of an adult corporal or sergeant. The youth could not last long at full tilt when whipping his comrade.
I bolded the portion of the quote most pertinent to this post and will get to the issue of drummers’ ages in a moment. This bolded part supplies a rationale that drummer boys administered floggings because they didn’t have an adult’s upper body strength and could thus go easier on the prisoner. Documentation exists to support the points about the flogging intervals, surgeon supervision, and duty of drummers. But the rationale itself doesn’t appear to have primary documentation supporting it. (If you find such a source, please send it to me.)
Years after the Revolution was over, that rationale may have been acquired to supply a motive or reason for why boys were involved in the business of floggings. How would a rationale be attributed? Unfortunately, people have “embellished” pieces of history all along to support personal and organizational agendas. If you don’t believe in these agendas, take a look at “Molly Pitcher.”
Here’s where matters get murkier. It’s a fact that units enlisted boys as young as twelve years of age. I checked into some primary sources—pension applications and, via a fellow researcher, muster rolls—to see what they could tell me about the ages of drummers. In both the British and Continental armies, there were plenty of adult drummers. However, boy drummers also became members of units as early as twelve years old. So were all drummers adults? No.
Life on a campaign trail was obviously harsher than that in garrison. Any boy who could endure the rigors of battle as a drummer and march all day carrying a heavy drum would have to be strong and stout. Such a boy would be expected to perform all the duties of a drummer. Most likely he’d be older than twelve—but that doesn’t mean he’d necessarily be a man. One pension application I read included a direct reference to the drummer flogging someone, and when he did it, he might have been fifteen years old. Tantalizing data.
We don’t yet know why drummers were chosen to administer floggings. Nor do we know if there was a minimum age requirement to perform the duty. In a unit, drummers were rotated through the task of flogging. If a prisoner was to receive a great number of lashes, several drummers could be assigned to carry out the sentence. Thus some boys may have been included in the duty rotation and wielded the cat-o’-nine-tails. Such circumstances don’t support the rationale that armies used drummer boys for a light touch with the whip.
Why would this rationale be attributed in the first place? For Americans living in the past century, the ideas of enlisting children as combatants, whipping a man’s back to shreds as corporal punishment, and using children to dispense such floggings are alien, horrific, and repulsive. But that level of social consciousness didn’t exist in the 18th century. The notion that boys were assigned to deliver floggings because they didn’t have the upper body strength of a man sounds like a very modern attribution. Maybe it’s an “agenda” to soften some grim realities: that “childhood” looked very different during the American Revolution, and that corporal punishment was brutal business in the British and Continental armies.
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“A ripping good read!” — Ann Parker, author of The Silver Rush Mystery Series
The Blacksmith’s Daughter, stand-alone second book of my “Mysteries of the American Revolution” trilogy, is on sale for the first time through 26 October in the Kindle Store for 99 cents. Regular price $5.99. Please spread the word.
The patriots wanted her husband dead. So did the redcoats. She took issue with both.
In the blistering Georgia summer of 1780, Betsy Sheridan uncovers evidence that her shoemaker husband, known for his loyalty to King George, is smuggling messages to a patriot-sympathizing, multinational spy ring based in the Carolinas. When he vanishes into the heart of military activity, in Camden, South Carolina, Betsy follows him, as much in search of him as she is in search of who she is and where she belongs. But battle looms between Continental and Crown forces. The spy ring is plotting multiple assassinations. And Betsy and her unborn child become entangled in murder and chaos.
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Have you been watching the excellent adaptation of Diana Gabaldon’s historical novel, Outlander, on the Starz channel? I have, and I also belong to an Outlander Facebook discussion group. Since my first book was published, readers have told me that my series appeals to fans of Gabaldon’s books because of certain settings and themes. Redcoats, war, 18th century, amoral characters, civilians in peril—hey, what’s not to like? So many interesting issues and points have emerged from the Outlander episodes that I’ve decided to explore some of them here on my blog.
*****
Early in season one of Outlander, viewers were shown the scarred back of character Jamie Fraser—the result of his being flogged with a cat-o’-nine-tails by a wacko, sadistic British officer. From all the research I’ve done into the American Revolution, I knew about the cat and the kind of damage it could do. Flogging permanently disfigured a person’s back. The makeup job done to actor Sam Heughan’s back to represent the scarring looked like what I expected, accurately depicting the traumatic damage.
But outrage, disbelief, and horror exploded in comments from members of the discussion group. Most had no idea that flogging with a cat could produce such trauma. Even after a flashback of the gruesome event was shown in episode six, the outrage, disbelief, and horror persisted. I wondered why there was such a disconnect about flogging.
Many people of my generation and earlier were spanked or “switched” if they were naughty children. That level of corporal punishment is mild compared to flogging, but if it’s a viewer’s only point of reference, the flogging in Outlander comes as a huge, horrific surprise. Also, in first-world countries, corporal punishment of children and criminals has been downplayed for several generations in favor of other forms of punishment.
Plus, in the last century, especially the first seven decades of the 20th century, I think that Hollywood’s depiction of “good guys” played a crucial role in the development of these mistaken beliefs about flogging. These Hollywood heroes had stiff upper lips when it came to pain and could unrealistically “take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’.” For all their trouble, villains seldom got more than a grunt out of these superhuman hero characters. The following two examples show you what I mean.
Errol Flynn portrayed many swashbuckling heroes on the Silver Screen. Here he is in the movie “Against All Flags.” His character, a Navy officer, is receiving twenty lashes on deck while the crew watches. It’s a ruse that his superiors concocted to convince everyone that he’s in disgrace so his reputation will precede him, and he can credibly infiltrate the villains’ operations. Aside from being a bit sweaty and emitting an occasional grunt of annoyance, Flynn’s character takes those twenty lashes in stride. He then moves on to getting dressed, hunting down the bad guys with sprightly energy, and (because he’s Errol Flynn) seducing a defiant and lovely woman. In reality, twenty lashes was a rather light sentence that might be delivered for minor crimes; often soldiers and sailors received at least fifty lashes. But those twenty would have torn the skin on a man’s back repeatedly. He’d have bled through his shirt, assuming he could have tolerated the pain of fabric rubbing his injured back. For several days afterward, he’d have been far too stiff and sore to gallivant around and seduce women, and he’d have carried scars from the flogging for the rest of his life.
Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock are considered icons and hero figures almost five decades after the debut of classic Star Trek on primetime TV. This image, which provides excellent fodder for those who write slash fanfic, shows Kirk and Spock in a jail cell right after futuristic Nazis have flogged them in the episode “Patterns of Force.” To break the lock on their jail cell, Spock stands on Kirk’s freshly-flogged back so he can reach a light bulb and activate a laser-producing gizmo in his wrist. All Kirk does is grunt a little and kvetch about how the Nazis did a thorough job on his back. The two then escape the cell, beat up some Nazis who try to restrain them, and steal their uniforms. In reality, the “thorough job” any Nazi (c’mon, a Nazi, folks) would have done on Kirk and Spock would have resulted in shredded skin on their backs and incapacitation for both men.
Flogging with a cat-o’-nine-tails was a common, flexible punishment for 18th-century soldiers and sailors convicted of a wide range of infractions. The experience that men received from flogging varied, as the whip could also be made of leather, and the knots could contain sharp objects like metal spikes to inflict an additional level of damage.
Trained soldiers and sailors were a valuable military investment in the 18th-century, thus the desired outcome of flogging wasn’t usually the recipient’s death. That meant that often the flogging was delivered by a boy who didn’t have the upper body strength of a man. (Here’s an update/correction on that statement.) Floggings were usually made public. The recipient’s company mates were required to turn out and watch him be flogged. The experience bonded all of them in a grisly way. After a flogging, the man was far less likely to screw up again because his mates were keeping him in line—and keeping themselves in line. I show this briefly in chapter thirty-five of my book Camp Follower: A Mystery of the American Revolution.
One more point about flogging. While it was considered punishment, the flogging that Jamie Fraser received in Outlander also demonstrated the psychological effectiveness of torture—and I don’t just mean torture of Jamie. We’re used to thinking of most forms of torture as a way to get someone to divulge information, right? But torture is actually not too effective at that. Studies have shown that when people are tortured, they say anything to make the agony stop. Most of the time, the information they spill is useless.
So if the torture wasn’t just for Jamie (who actually withstood it and didn’t give the loco villain what he wanted), who was it for? It was for the townsfolk who were witnessing the flogging. If you watch the episode, notice their reactions. The villain turned the flogging into a weapon of terror and made it public to keep the civilians in line. And he delivered the flogging himself to give it a personal touch.
Flogging, corporal punishment in the #18thCentury, and #Outlander http://bit.ly/1rV2zSR #history #AmRev
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Essayist: Lars D.H. Hedbor
Contribution: signed paperback set of the first three books in the author’s series
Winner: Lynn Demsky
Essayist: Helena Finnegan
Contribution: a $5 Amazon gift certificate
Winner: Sheila Ingle
Essayist: Dr. Christine Swager
Contribution: paperback copy of Musgrove Mill Historic Site
Winner: Tracy Smith
Essayist: David Neilan
Contribution: DVD of the South Carolina ETV program “Chasing the Swamp Fox”
Winner: Tate Jones
Essayist: Sheila Ingle
Contribution: paperback copy of Brave Elizabeth
Winner: Denise Duvall
Essayist: Jack Parker
Contribution: $10 discount certificate toward the purchase of a copy of Parker’s Guide to the Revolutionary War in South Carolina
Winner: Lars D.H. Hedbor
Essayist: Suzanne Adair
Contribution: winner’s choice of one title from author’s publications
Winner: Jenni Gate
Congratulations to all the winners!
Thanks to my wonderful essayists who contributed so much to this year’s program. Thanks, also, to everyone who visited and commented on the posts during the “Week-long Fourth of July.” Watch for another Relevant History post, coming soon.
Did you like what you read? Learn about downloads, discounts, and special offers from Relevant History authors and Suzanne Adair. Subscribe to Suzanne’s free newsletter.
