Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Debunking More Historical Myths
HISTORY
American history is replete with enhanced incidents
that actually turn out to be myths when they are closely examined. Here are a
few more to set the historical record straight:
The Pound
Ridge $12 Million Flag
An auction record was set on
June 14, 2006, when the winning bid for a flag from the American Revolution
reached the improbably high bid of $12,360,000 at a Sotheby's auction. (Previously
the record paid for a Revolutionary War flag was $700,000.) Appropriately, the
date was Flag Day.
The fragile, hand-stitched
and hand-painted silk pennant of the 2nd Regiment of Continental Light Dragoons
that fetched this price was allegedly "captured" at Pound Ridge , N.Y.
This flag and three others actually
captured by him in May of 1780 in South Carolina
were auctioned by a Tarleton descendant in Britain
For all four flags, an
exciting total of $17,416,000 changed hands. In the words of one observer,
"this was more than the cost of the entire Revolutionary War."
Banastre (nicknamed
"Bloody Ban") Tarleton was a short, redheaded cavalry colonel from Liverpool who gave up the study of law and accepted a
commission bought for him in the King's Dragoon Guards. Only 21 when he became
a lieutenant in 1775, Tarleton rocketed to the rank of lieutenant colonel
quickly because of his reckless daring.
Many of his troopers in the
British Legion were volunteers recruited among the sons of Tory families in New York Mile
Square Yonkers
To the north, at Pound Ridge,
was a troop of about 90 American cavalry from Connecticut
Tarleton was ordered to make
a surprise raid on Pound Ridge and capture Lockwood on whose head a reward of
forty guineas had been set. (A guinea was a gold coin equivalent to 21
shillings; the pound was worth 20 shillings.) An American spy, Leonard
Kinnicut, warned Col. Sheldon of the impending raid, although he could not tell
him when it would happen.
Tarleton chose a rainy night
to move his 360 mounted British and Hessian troops toward Pound Ridge. Firearms
were useless in a drenching rain, and sentries were less likely to be alert.
Moving north by way of Bedford, they arrived at Pound Ridge on the morning of
July 2, 1779, and drove Sheldon back about two miles before militiamen started
gathering and Tarrleton had to withdraw. Lockwood escaped, and a frustrated
Tarleton torched his home and the church.
Sheldon eventually chased
Tarleton and his troops from Pound Ridge to what is now Mount Kisco
And although his raid on
Pound Ridge was a failure, Tarleton made much of the "captured" rebel
flag of the Second Regiment of the Continental Light Dragoons. Instead of
having been wrested from the hands of the enemy in a bloody battle, the flag
had been found among officers' baggage in one of the houses the raiding party
had ransacked. How much of the $12.36 million paid for this object was based on
Tarleton’s inflation of a lie into a legend we shall never know.
Who Burned Bedford
The unincorporated hamlet
that calls itself Bedford Village was established in 1680, but visitors are
always surprised that no house in Bedford Bedford
during his raid on Pound Ridge, the entire hamlet of Bedford
For nearly 200 years,
historians dated the burning of Bedford
In 1974, two local historians,
Dorothy Hinitt and Frances Duncombe, published a book titled The Burning of Bedford that conclusively
proved Bedford
Six years later, while researching
Bedford
British cavalry, 400 strong,
arrived in Bedford on July 11 to find that Moylan’s
dragoons had left Bedford the day before to defend
Connecticut Clinton
had mounted a punitive expedition to punish Connecticut
Frustrated at finding their
quarry gone and still angry at having been fired upon by Bedford
residents during the earlier Pound Ridge raid, cavalry troopers led by Lt. Col.
Samuel Birch of the 17th Light Dragoons burned Bedford
Did Mrs. Murray Stall the British?
Flouting all historical
evidence, circumstantial and factual, the myth has persisted that Mary Lindley
Murray gave a party for British officers that delayed their invasion of Manhattan Island
It's a delightful fiction but
one that does not bear close examination. On September 15, 1776, the British
made an impressive amphibious landing at Kip's Bay (on the East River at about
what is now 34th Street Manhattan
According to some
historians, Gen. Israel Putnam's 3,000 troops and 67 guns in lower Manhattan could have been easily captured had British troops
pushed across this sparsely settled part of the narrow island
of Manhattan to the shore of the Hudson
But, in a widely accepted
story, patriotic Mrs. Robert Murray, whose house occupied the elevation then
called Inclenberg (now Murray Hill), diverted invading British staff officers
by inviting them to stop for refreshments.
This charming account first
saw the light of day in the journal kept by a tireless diarist of the period,
Continental Army surgeon James Thacher.
Later writers imaginatively
embellished the Murray
Was Mrs. Murray indeed a
patriotic siren, a veritable American Circe, as so many writers portrayed her?
The truth is she was a 50-year-old Quaker lady, the wife of a prosperous
merchant and the mother of twelve children--a middle-aged woman oddly cast in
the improbable role of vamp and temptress.
Because the gently sloping
hill on which the Murray mansion stood was an objective of the first wave of
the landing force, Mrs. Murray may have
invited the British officers into her parlor--but not very likely "to
enjoy her old Madeira," as one writer put it. She had little choice. The
British had selected her house to serve as their temporary headquarters.
Given that the British
officers were fresh from victory at Brooklyn Heights and spoiling for a another
fight, Madeira, even if it existed in the Murray household, would hardly have delayed
the advance of the entire British landing force bent on evicting American
troops and occupying New York City.
The British delay in pushing forward has a
more prosaic explanation.
Gen. Sir William Howe had
ordered the first division of about 4,000 men under Gen. Henry Clinton to land at
Kip’s Bay and seize and hold Murray Hill until the 9,000 men of the second division
could be landed and brought into action. It was not until 5 p.m. that Howe’s
entire force was ashore.
While Howe waited for the
second wave to join him as planned, George Washington took advantage of the
gift of time to reform his troops in strong natural defensive positions on Morningside
Heights (then called Harlem Heights), near the site of the present Columbia
University, where work had already been begun on a three-line defense in depth.
The repulse of Howe's
impetuous advance guard in a running battle on the Heights the next day taught
the British commander something about Washington Washington
