Blog #4 - Revolution Article

1. By todays standards, the American Revolution was no a horrendous war. This is based on he belief that not many men died, few civilians were affected by hostilities, and that there was not widespread suffering amongst either side. However, This is not the case as 30,000 out of the American population of 2.5 million died because of the war. In ratio to todays population, that would be roughly 3 million American casualties.


2. Because the artillerymen in the Revolutionary War did not possess advanced technology, the armies fought at close range and often engaged in hand-to-hand combat. In some instances the armies fouht in distances no greater than home plate to second plate on a baseball field.

3. Almost half of the prisoners captured in the American Revolution were massacred by their captors. This killing of prisones spurred from loyalists killing seventy five percent of the rebels who laid down their arms in what is now known as the Waxhaws Massacre. With this fresh in the mind of the Continental Army several loyalists that were captured were slaughtered in an enactment of revenge. Prisoners who made it past these slaughterings would later die of being depraved of necessities, as their clothing and commodities were taken off of their bodies and given to the troops.

4. There was an unusually high number of civilian casualties during the American Revolution. Most of these civilians died from diseases that were unkowingly spread bysoldiers on both sides. Civilians also died in frontier Indian attacks, partisan warfare, and battles for cities.

5. Depictions of the American Revolution are misleading distort the views of events. This is because painters of the American Revolution paintings tried to glorify their subjects, hence some of the more disturbing images of the war were not well depicted during this era of history. However, in the Civil War, there are gruesome depictions of battle that does not parallel American Revolution art. For example, Civil War art often shows depictions of mangled corpses and injured soldiers.