ENGLISH AT IT AGAIN

     A Revolutionary War epic , starring Mel Gibson, entitled “The Patriot” will be released at theaters on June 28.

     The British are complaining that it is an unfair representation of England’s  methods in the Revolutionary War. In particular they cite the fictional “Tavington”, the English cavalry leader as being a misrepresentation.  Didn’t the English learn their lesson in 1775? Here are some history many have never heard or have forgotten. No more revisionism. 

1.     In 1774, Lord Dunmore, the Royal Governor of Virginia deliberately sent a force of 1,100 Militiamen from southwestern Virginia into what was supposed to be a trap by scheming with Chief Cornstalk to entrap the group to limit western expansion and enable him to form an alliance with the Indians in his fight with the French. This resulted in the Battle of Point Pleasant. 

2.     The fictional “Lord Tavington” is a thinly veiled Banastre Tarleton, Cornwallis’s cavalry leader, whose men went back after a battle near Camden, South Carolina and slaughtered the American wounded. 

3. Daniel Morgan, the Patriot’s leader at the Battle of Cowpens was definitely not an anglophile.  While serving in the French and Indian Wars, he had been tied to a wagon wheel and given 500 lashes under orders of an English officer.

     Today they are in the forefront in the fight to take away our Second Amendment right to “Own and bear” arms.  The first company to knuckle under to the Clinton drive was Smith & Wesson, an English company. 

     It behooves those in England to quit trying to put the revisionist stamp on American history. 

Lt. Col. Henry T. Cook, USMC (Ret.)
Great-great grandson of Thomas Munsey Cook