Jack Darrell Crowder

Massacres Jack Darrell Crowder

Who would want to read a book about massacres? If you wanted to read it for the blood and gore, then go see a slasher movie. If you want an understanding of what a massacre is, how they could happen, what went on, and what the results would be; then this is the book for you. Why would men act like savages during a battle and refuse to give quarter to their enemy even after they throw down their weapons and surrender? Why would innocent women and children be put to the sword? This book takes a look at the causes behind this behavior and how actions can get out of hand so easily. It will also examine the propaganda behind some so-called "massacres." It is important that these events be examined and their causes be brought to light. Both sides in the Revolutionary War need to share the blame. Eyewitness accounts are used to describe the events. Abraham Blauveldt, a Captain in the militia, wrote about the Baylor Massacre, "That pursuing the enemy as they were retiring from Herring-town, on the morning of the twenty-eighth of September last, and finding myself surrounded by a superior force, and a retreat impossible, I offered to surrender myself, but that instead of quarters, I was instantly fired upon and wounded in the thigh, and afterwards stabbed in the breast with a bayonet, and left for dead. I heard the British officers and soldiers swear that they would give quarters to no militia man. "A Hessian sergeant, boasting of the exploits the night of the Paoli Massacre exclaimed, "What a running about, barefoot, and half clothed, and in the light of their won fire! These showed us where to chase them, while they could not see us. We killed three hundred of the rebels with the bayonet. I stuck them myself like so many pigs, one after another, until the blood ran out of the touch-hold of my musket. "Captain Warren noted in his diary what he saw at the Cherry Valley Massacre, "In the afternoon and morning of the 13th we sent out parties after the enemy withdrew; brought in the dead; such a shocking sight my eyes never beheld before of savage and brutal barbarity; to see the husband morning over his dead wife, with four dead children lying by her side, mangled, scalpt, and some of the heads, some of the legs and arms cut off, some flesh torn off their bones by dogs."