Re: British Burning of Churches in SC and GA

[SusanG1400@aol.com]

The source on fortifying the churches is my Way family history which you keep 
asking about but which I have already described. I wrote the following on 
page 141, "When the American Revolution came, the churches at Dorchester and 
Beech Hill, as well as the one in Midway, Georgia, were closed and fortified. 
 The British burned all three."

While I have some 900 footnotes in my book, it is a family history and I did 
not feel the need to document every historical statement and have no footnote 
there.  In my research I traveled three separate times in a motor home up and 
down the Eastern seaboard from Salem, MA and Boston to Savannah, Sunbury, 
Midway, and Hinesville, GA.  In Boston I researched in the NEHGS headquarters 
for days, in the Boston Public Library, etc; in the Philadelphia Free Public 
Library, in the state archives and libraries of VA, NC, SC, GA, TX, and in 
the historical associations of VA at Richmond, in SC at Charleston, and in GA 
at Savannah. I went twice to the DAR Library in Camden, SC,and twice to the 
A.S. Salley Archives in Orangeburg, SC.  I visited more courthouses than I 
would like to think about in SC, GA, and TX. I also went to Salt Lake City.  
Since I live in the Virginia suburbs of Washington,  DC, I have spent many 
days in the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the DAR Library, and 
the Federal Bureau of Land Management. Finally, although I had already 
visited Great Britain six times in either a personal or official capacity, 
beginning as an undergraduate student, and had seen all of that country I had 
ever planned to, I recently undertook still another trip there solely to 
research the Ways and the families they immediately married into in America, 
the Sumners and Mavericks.

I don't know where I picked up the info on the fortifying of the churches, 
but I am sure it is accurate.  It may have come from brochures passed out by 
the state park rangers in Old Dorchester State Park and the Old Sunbury State 
Park, or from local, county and state histories.  A.S. Salley wrote a lot on 
the subject.  But any standard history of the American Revolution would 
address the military campaigns.  The same might be said of a biography of 
Lord Charles Cornwallis, of the best cavalry officer of the British 
Empire----young and arrogant Sir Banastre Tarleton----and of a biography of 
the "Swamp Fox, Francis Marion, or of the US General Nathaniel Greene, a 
Rhode Island Quaker who proved to be an exception to the rule that Quakers 
did not fight.

I tossed out my comment on the fortifying of the churches because I feel that 
Americans have too one-sided a view of the American Revolution, one 
strengthened by such items as the recent popular Mel Gibson movie, The 
Patriot. It was good enough that I saw it again when it re-ran on television. 
 The hero played by Gibson is based on the Swamp Fox and the villain is based 
on Tarleton.  It was a little much, however, when the German director of the 
film showed the Tarleton character locking up a church full of men, women, 
and children in SC and torching them. Whatever their faults, 18th century 
British gentlemen officers did not act like 20th century Nazis.  

If Tarleton had carried out such an atrocity against a church full of British 
subjects, you may be sure there would have been a parliamentary inquiry, his 
career would have been finished, and probably that of his commanding officer, 
Lord Cornwallis, as well.  As it is, Tarleton did not die at the hand of the 
Swamp Fox at the Battle of Cowpens as was depicted in the movie.  He rode on 
to Monticello in Virginia to scare off Governor Thomas Jefferson and others, 
and accompanied Cornwallis at the surrender at Yorktown to George Washington 
in 1781.  Tarleton, far from being disgraced, later successfully ran for 
Parliament.

As for Cornwallis, his career was not even ended by the disastrous 
development at Yorktown.  After I retired from the diplomatic service, I was 
a Fulbright scholar in India where I learned that Cornwallis commanded around 
Madras, Bangalore, and Mysore in the south.  Of course there, he did not have 
to contend with the likes of Marion and Greene. 

Since Mr. John Sinclair Quarterman is partly of Scottish origin, as am I and 
my partner, Susan Sinclair Grady, Virginia Commissioner of Clan Sinclair, 
USA, I might point out the influence of the Scots and Scotch-Irish on the 
Revolutionary War fighting  in the south.  For five years the war had been a 
gentlemanly affair in New England and the Mid-Atlantic States.  Sir Henry 
Clinton then invaded the South and ordered Cornwallis to hold it, the idea 
being to then open peace negotiations and give away only the North while 
holding on to the South.  

The war turned ugly in the South in part because of so many Scots, who fought 
on both sides.  There were more Revolutionary War battles fought in SC than 
in any other state, but all in the closing months of the fighting.  It also 
turned ugly because of the personality of Cornwallis.  Having a personality 
somewhat like U.S. General Douglas MacArthur, he was not temperamentally 
suited for garrison duty or "holding."  He liked too much to attack and 
destroy.

Once again, my book: A. Dane Bowen, Jr., Ph. D. (Ivy League in History), 
Henry Way (1583-1667) and Descendants: Pioneering Four Centuries across 
America, Baltimore, Md., 2001, 488 pp. size 8 and 1|2 x 11. The 25-page 
index, in four columns, 10 font, has some 5,950 name entries.  It was so well 
received that it quickly sold out.  The publisher will not reprint less than 
50 additional copies.  I am unwilling to take the risk of ordering so many 
more.  If your list members and\or others can put together an order of 35 
books at $50 apiece, I will order another 50!

Since the book is copyrighted, copies were deposited in the Library of 
Congress and will presumably become available there.  However, I can tell you 
from experience that the last time I looked, the Quarterman book about three 
years after its publication was still not available there. I only first saw 
it at the public library in the county seat of Liberty Co., GA, Hinesville.  
I later bought a copy.

Dane Bowen