Quotes from Ray Raphael

Literally and figuratively, this was the fate of many southern slaves in the Revolutionary War. They had scented freedom—some had even managed a taste—but here they were on a desolate plain, starving and diseased, cast out and abandoned between two sets of white men who had once used them to great advantage.

Historically, the Western Abenakis opposed all English-speaking Europeans. Their homeland—present-day Vermont, New Hampshire, and southern Quebec—lay between areas of English and French control.

Most of the Iroquois, however warlike, suspected it was in their own best interests to sit this one out. But that was not easily done, for the pressures to become involved only intensified.

In 1776 the wording in the Declaration of Independence—"the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions"—played well to a white audience, but it did not win any friends among Native Americans. Even as the patriots tried to convince the Iroquois to remain neutral, they pushed many into the enemy camp through hostile actions and attitudes.

The combined British, Hessian, Canadian, and loyalist forces besieging the fort came to about 650; the Indians matched that number, effectively doubling the strength of the king's army.

Iroquois had shed the blood of their brothers; the League of the Six Nations had been torn apart by the white man's war. Iroquois warriors were no longer observers to the contest, nor incidental participants. Senecas and Oneidas alike suddenly embraced the war as their own and sought revenge for their losses.

Sullivan and his army arrived at Genesee river, where they destroyed every article of the food kind that they could lay their hands on. A part of our corn they burnt, and threw the remainder into the river. They burnt our houses, killed what few cattle and horses they could find, destroyed our fruit trees, and left nothing but the bare soil and timber.

Once they had survived the winter and returned to the warpath, these Indians would not simply be fighting for the Crown—now, they had good reasons of their own to seek revenge against the American patriots.

The study of women in the American Revolution, based on the extant writings of contemporaries, is beset with dangers. First, because only a fraction of women in those times were literate, we are working with a biased sample. Less than half of the women who left wills could sign their names, and those who left wills came from the more prosperous and presumably more educated portion of the female population

But is it equitable that 99, rather 999, should suffer for the Extravagance or Grandeur of one? Especially when it is considered that Men frequently owe their Wealth to the impoverishment of their Neighbors?

the American Revolution was our first civil war, pitting neighbors against neighbors and splitting families apart.

If we look at what women themselves had to say, we see that many were not overly enthusiastic about their men leaving home.

The notion that women were "displaying a distinctive form of patriotism" by "shaming" their men into battle oversimplifies the female experience of the Revolutionary War. Women did become more political, by necessity if not by choice—but this does not mean that the political goals of the state superceded personal commitments to family and natural instincts for survival.