Talk:American Revolutionary War/Archive 29

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Add Alexander Hamilton to the list of leaders/commanders as he was a major general and a leader in the Siege of Yorktown as well as many other battles.

Alexander Hamilton was very important in the win against the British in the Siege of Yorktown and he should be listed correctly --ConstructorRob18 (talk) 02:38, 23 January 2021 (UTC)Rob

While Hamilton surely did the nation good service on Washington's staff as a Lieutenant Colonel, and as a New York lawyer-writer in the Federalist Papers to help persuade a dozen or more Virginia Anti-Federalists to switch sides at the final vote to ratify the 1788 US Constitution in the Richmond, Virginia Ratification Convention.

To be correct for the ARW, Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton commanded three regiments at the dawn assault on Redoubt No. 10. He was later given a field promotion to full Colonel by George Washington on account of his personal valor that day.

Hamilton received his US commission as a major general in the Adams Administration for two years, 1798-1800. On his elevation, Hamilton proposed marching the US Army through the southern states to secure Federalist John Adams political base where states had awarded their Electoral College votes to Jefferson. Adams refused him, and maintained Hamilton over senior Major General Henry Knox only reluctantly. Knox resigned rather than serve under Hamilton.

When Adams found Secretary of State Pickering (MA) and Secretary of War McHenry (MD) were more loyal to Hamilton and his war faction in the Federalist Party than to Adams and his neutrality (peace) faction, the two cabinet members were summarily fired in July 1800. In the November election, Adams lost his three-elector advantage in 1796 Maryland, as Adams and Jefferson were tied there 5-5 in 1800. When Jefferson was elected president, he did not choose to maintain the good General Hamilton as the senior commanding officer in the US Army.

Sidebar: Hamilton was not a Burr who got himself tried for treason in connection with US General Wilkerson in New Orleans who was in Spanish pay as a spy in the ARW and afterwards. Instead of becoming a Burr confederate against Spain, Wilkerson testified against Burr in his trial for trying to separate the US west of the Appalachians into a Spanish Province. The Spanish may have seen enough of American privateers in the Caribbean during the ARW to want to avoid military engagement there amidst the Napoleonic Wars shortly after their defeat at Trafalgar.

Nevertheless, as to Hamilton's prospects as a "Federalist" general in the Jefferson administration, he was "problematic" enough for Jefferson to look elsewhere for senior generalship in the US Army. Jefferson instead settled on the problematic "New Orleans" General Wilkinson. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 15:58, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Article is stable

@Tenryuu: It seems that the contentious smoke has long since cleared. Am hoping you'll continue in your reviewing efforts so we can move forward and at long last nominate this article for GA. Hope all is well. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 04:47, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Gwillhickers, I'm willing to give a quick look at §§Britain's "American war" and Peace–Commemorations of the Revolutionary War. In regards to footnotes, I am not going to touch them, as I believe that they should substantially be reduced due to excessive detail that would be better suited to sub-articles of the Revolutionary War. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 20:54, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps some of the footnotes could be trimmed a bit, keeping any of the more major points of context in place. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 23:43, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 15 February 2021

MsKDoesAScience (talk) 23:24, 15 February 2021 (UTC) MsKDoesAScience (talk) 23:24, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

This looks like a fascinating way to extend my history avocation at Wikipedia. I've downloaded the recommended Audacity (audio editor) to my desktop for use here. I will explore how to record the article in sections to line up with the Wiki Project guidelines over the upcoming week. More later. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 08:51, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Footnote conventions in a long article

1. User talk:Finnaboing has made an edit [1], with a large number of very elegant and appreciated edits for style that tightens up the grammar throughout. Many thanks.

2. However, in there is a footnote style "referenceP", which obfuscates the sources to no good purpose, especially were it to be carried out methodically throughout the 300-odd unique source citations. There is no need to make it mechanically intricate for a reader-researcher, wikipedia-contributor, and article-reviewer to determine where a passage is sourced. - For example, were the one-off convention uniformly applied throughout, the last footnoted source would have 14 A's to denominate the reference. That is, 300 ÷ 26 = 13.04. So the penultimate footnote would read, referenceZZZZZZZZZZZZZ, and the sourcing in for the last named American Revolutionary War article source would be identified in the inline citation, referenceAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

I fear that adopting that style would lead to contributor errors in the first place, and in the second place, the undiscussed change of style for this lengthy article would make it virtually impossible to get a reviewer to take on the article-review task. - I am not persuaded that the "referenceA" sourcing convention is the way forward for an improved article to 'Good Article' status, so I'll try to find the one-offs and conform them to the agreed upon convention for this article -- unless someone can give me a better understanding of the editor intentions and the effects on the article review process to 'Good Article' status. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 07:44, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Nova Scotia, etc.

The war was essentially a breakup of British America, most of which was along the east coast despite the maps, the result being the US in possession of the middle to north part, Britain remaining in control of the northeast including Province of Quebec, Nova Scotia, etc., and the Floridas going back to Spain. Although there was a fair bit of sympathy in NS initially for the Americans ("14th colony" was a real question), heavy US raiding and a British naval base at Halifax definitely kept NS fighting on the British side. A more accurate picture in the infobox would be:

• Great Britain
• Parts of British America including:
  • Province of Quebec
  • Nova Scotia
  • etc. a couple others, probably leaving out British Arctic Territories, etc.

Cheers, Facts707 (talk)

Thanks. Good perspective to view the thirteen as one of British North America.

The 'Patriot Cause' - at Philadelphia, not that in contemporary Amsterdam -- had friends-by-commerce-and-family in two noteworthy British colonies that were not in the "Thirteen": (1) Bermuda was formerly a part of Virginia. Washington's wheat trade there allowed him to get free of his tobacco creditors, and provided the commercial connections that allowed his freedmen-family-farmers to prosper on his land-grants to them in Fairfax-Alexandria after his death and their subsequent manumission. The commercially influential Bermuda Taylor family was connected to the Tidewater Virginia Taylors.

(2) Nova Scotia-New Brunswick was formerly a part of Massachusetts-Maine in the British Empire. At the evacuation of the Francophone Acadians, their farms were repopulated by New England settlers primarily from Massachusetts. But on the island of Nova Scotia, several regiments of freed Loyalist militia were settled at their evacuation from New York and Charleston, and the garrison there successfully secured the principle ports against becoming the "14th Colony" of the original US.

(3) Another important British North American colony in this frame was Quebec. Among the British subject-residents there were Francophone settlers descendent of previous French Empire settlement who were -- not so much sympathetic to a "republican" revolution from monarchial governance -- as they were interested in worshiping publicly as Roman Catholics again.

- Thus the entirety of western Quebec in the Ohio Valley south of the Great Lakes was first conquered by Virginia militia and administered as Ohio County, Virginia in its General Assembly with freedom of religious practice and slavery notably 'grandfathered' to the French-ethnics in Illinois; the French in modern Missouri and their Native American allies supported the Spanish against the English and their Native American allies during the Revolution. Although Revolutionary War veterans in Virginia were given land grants across the Ohio River from Pittsburg and elsewhere, all of Virginia (and other states) claims north of the Ohio were ceded to the US towards the Northwest Territories to persuade Maryland to sign the Articles of Confederation in 1781.

As I recall -- we should double-check -- there were two Quebec-recruited Continental Line regiments (from east of the St. Lawrence River) and two Nova Scotia-recruited Continental Line regiments (from west of the island) equipped and funded by a combination of Congress, New York and Massachusetts. Do their noses outnumber those colonial residents from there fighting in regular British regiments? We know there were sufficient sustained Loyalists in NY and SC for the Tarlton regiment to become regular British Army. Were there sufficient numbers in modern Canada? And, also, do we have stats on the respective militias for a comparison of resident-support?

HOWEVER, I'm not sure how the expanded Infobox should be balanced 3-to-3. Perhaps the US side gets Nova Scotia, Quebec and Bermuda flags, the British Empire gets the Bahamas, Jamaica and Florida flags? TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 11:22, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

I don't see the point of listing loyal colonies since they lacked the legal and de facto capacity to wage war. Also, since Amherst was appointed Governor General of British North America in 1760, the term "British North America" seems to pre-date the U.S. revolution. It was never however a political entity. TFD (talk) 14:09, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

That's an interesting evolution to the north after 1760. On further consideration, combatants organized in regimental formations fighting for the US might be listed under the Infobox 'Combatants' with a flag antecedent to Amherst, perhaps, as I understand from your post that a reliable source suggests that the provinces of Nova Scotia and Quebec were "de facto" incompetent within the Empire after 1760 to raise their own militias and fight under their own flags as the Germanic regiments of the mercenary princes did for the British. But their inhabitants were able to do so for the US, so it would be appropriate to mention them in the article and represent them in the Infobox under 'Combatants', as their numbers approach the Native Americans referenced there. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 08:26, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Presumably both Quebec and Nova Scotia could have rebelled in which case they would be counted. But failing to do so, they could not choose whether or not to enter the conflict - that was determined by Britain. Unlike the 13 colonies, Nova Scotia and Quebec did not enter the war following a vote of their legislatures, but on the orders of Britain. (Note - Quebec did not have a legislature.) TFD (talk) 14:52, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

"pay for their own defense were vigorously resisted."?!

"...attempts to have the colonies pay for their own defense were vigorously resisted."

That is patently false. One of the complaints that colonists had that influenced justification for the Revolution was that the North American Colonies had not only largely paid for but manned and equipped the military forces used to defeat the French in the French and Indian/Seven Years War leading up to the Revolution. Benjamin Franklin famously answered in his testimony in front of the British Parliament:

"Q. Do you think it right that America should be protected by this country and pay no part of the expense? A. That is not the case. The colonies raised, clothed, and paid, during the last war, near 25,000 men, and spent many millions."

I see consensus on the lede appears to have been recently achieved, so I am coming here first before removing the phrase. Shoreranger (talk) 18:32, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

You are correct, the phrase should be removed.

- Having paid half or more of the British Imperial costs of the French and Indian War in North America with their colonial blood and in colonial treasure, the North American colonies resisted becoming the only realm in the Empire to pay additional taxes to Westminster for Empire indebtedness acquired during its worldwide Seven Years' War principally engaged in Europe and elsewhere.

- The "no taxation without representation" referred an assumed authority by the Hanoverian Parliaments to tax North American colonies -- especially to Virginia and by inference the others carved out of the first land grant "sea to sea", which were altogether since the 1600s and with Tudor and Stuart monarchs, "The Fourth Realm" of Empire -- when the same debt-related taxes for the same war of Empire were not equitably applied uniformly to England, Scotland, Ireland, the sugar-Caribbean or tea-India. Jamaican sugar alone contributed more than twice the net wealth to the Empire than all of the North American colonies put together, including the Thirteen, Nova Scotia-New Brunswick, Quebec-Ohio country, and Bermuda.

- Further, Westminster and the Hanoverian Crown made no allowance for the North American colony monies raised for the war effort in addition to those previously paid for the Seven Years' War effort by England, Scotland, Ireland, the Caribbean, India, and the North American colonies, combined -- as noted in the Benjamin Franklin testimony in the post above.

- Procedurally, that phrase is not part of a page-editor consensus. It is snuck in, at least without my knowledge, though I check this page once or twice every calendar day. - - - This sort of sneak-in edit -- by an administrator with 'special' editing privileges? -- is akin to the addition of Quebec in the Infobox as a contributor to the British side that was not recorded on the article's "View history" page before I removed it. -- Also of note: for about six months in 2020, this article was overwhelmed with dozens of unsourced POV edits in a "firehose of falsehoods" that were never brought to light or collegially discussed on the Talk page.

- I removed "Quebec" from the British side of the Infobox because about half of the Province of Quebec with Francophone inhabitants was ceded to the US to become its "Northwest Territory" between the Great Lakes and the Ohio River (and more), and most of the Quebecois fighting in the Revolutionary War fought in Congressional, New York, and Massachusetts regiments. There was no regular British Army regiment recruited from "Anglo-Canadians" comparable to Tarlton's Loyalists in South Carolina. There was no such sustained support among any North American settlement to be found for Imperial Britain north of the Great Lakes -- without the sustained presence of an occupying army, rather like the case in New York City, and the easternmost island off the Province of Nova Scotia, occupied Nova Scotia and its ports akin to Charleston.

I concur. remove the intro paragraph phrase, "attempts to have the colonies pay for their own defense were vigorously resisted." Thank you. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 11:08, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for the quick and well-reasoned responses. I have edited the phrase to be factual. Shoreranger (talk) 14:31, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Your edit isn't factual.[2] At the time of the American Revolution, the Seven Years War (1756-1763) was over and the issue was whether American colonists should pay for British troops protecting the colonists. The American complaint was not that Britain was not defending them, but that they should not be taxed by a parliament that did not represent them. Note the new sentence, factually correct or not, has no relevance to the topic: The British were in debt over the wars and the colonists had paid their share. Also, saying that the Americans spent "millions" is vague. Are they pounds, dollars or pieces of eight, and how many millions are we talking about. TFD (talk) 15:36, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

(1) The edit is of course factual so I concur in it, and your reply is unsubstantiated fluff, folderol and falsity. Perhaps you would like to tag the post with a "citation needed" in the collegial way of Wikipedia. British subjects paid taxes in the coin of the British Empire, not that of the Spanish Empire. It is mere TFD fire-hosing to assert however indirectly that British colonial taxes were accounted in Spanish coin, "are they dollars or pieces of [an] eight[th-of-a-Spanish-dollar]"? You have no site that Westminster colonial taxation accounts were ever anywhere kept in Spanish dollar denominations for any British colony, yet. It may be that your post isn't factual on this account.

(2) Your critical post isn't factual on this point: The 'fire-hose' falsehood supposes that the entire British Empire war debt for the Seven Years' War was retired by 1763. It was, in fact, not; you have no cite to suggest that it was. Paying for the debt as it came due was a matter of concern and debate in the Hanoverian Parliament at the time.

- Increasing Treasury revenue was the primary reason given for Parliament innovating stricter forms of mercantilism restraining trade by the Thirteen Colonies through the Townshend Acts, including restricting lateral trade with other Western Hemisphere colonies of the British Empire for commodities such as wheat and nails. This has been previous sourced on this page, and noted by an editor posting as TFD. Where were you, dear colleague? Are you trolling here?

(3) If the new taxes were for Thirteen Colony defense alone in the 1770s, what is the source that substantiates any objective threat sourced by a reliable scholar menacing them from either the French Empire or the Spanish Empire prior to the Continental victory at Saratoga? As discussed here previously with editor "TFD" posting, the French and Spanish defeat by the British in the Seven Years' War was substantial and wide-ranging.

- Their commerce was subject to indiscriminate boarding by the Royal Navy, and their cargos held "ransom" at penalties in British-occupied Majorca ceded at the Seven Years' War victory, that were even more egregious to the French and Spanish diplomats than the Muslim Barbary princes. Why tax Boston for a Royal Navy to steal from French merchants in the Mediterranean Sea, and how does cutting off Virginia exports of nails to Jamaica and the Bahamas help England or Wales, exactly?

(4) The complaint of the Thirteen was not over paying any taxes to Empire, it was that they should not pay more than any other realm of the Empire, hence the distinction made in the Continental Congress by all parties (Loyalist, neutral-reluctant, Patriot) between 'external [imperial] taxes' which were agreed to, and 'internal [intra-colony] taxes' which were not unless they were likewise equitably levied on England, Scotland, Ireland, Jamaica, India, et alia, of the British Empire. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 08:53, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

The edit doesn't say that colonists had paid for the Seven Years War and the French and Indian War through imperial taxation. Presumably it is referring to the fact that colonists financed and manned colonial militias. Colonists became upset when told that they would have to start paying for British troops through taxes, although they were not represented in parliament. The Spanish dollar indeed was accepted as legal tender in the colonies, according to the website of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. One Spanish dollar was valued at six shillings. In 1792, it became the basis of the new American currency.[3] That's why it's called the American dollar, not the American pound. So yes you could pay your taxes in Spanish dollars, which was the most widely circulated currency. TFD (talk) 14:59, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

(1) It is anachronism to speak of 1792 "American dollars" in 1740-1763 during the Seven Year's War and its run up of military adventuring when the British Treasury accumulated war debt.

(2) Money is a fungible commodity by definition. All imperial taxes to the British Treasury were subject to pay on the Seven Years' War debt -- still outstanding in the 1770s. No payment from a North American colony treasury to the British Treasury was 'earmarked' for princely robes for the royal family or tar for a Royal Navy rope.

(3) One can only hope that the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta also notes that in Colonial America, there was a barter system in place because the commerce of the productive North American colonies lacked specie due to the one-way mercantile regime they were burdened with -- even as their enfranchised populations surpassed those of the 'home' populations in the entire British Isles altogether.

- In the view of some British Islanders, and Wiki-editor POV pushers here over the past year, the Americans were not to be "counted" because they were "mongrels" of not only the privileged Anglican English at 'home', but here they were also enfranchised colonial fellow-subjects (good trouble - see John Wilkes), and lawfully intermarried with, Protestant Scots and Irish, Catholic French and Irish, Dissenting English and Germans, and the occasional swarthy Portuguese sailor or free black artisan or harbor teamster. But the Americans in their unique though cursed "amalgamation" were destined to be counted, not because of their shortcomings, but because of their strengths and virtues that were present at their best.

Some of that best was exhibited during the American Revolutionary War. That, as well as disagreeable, disappointing aspects should all be recorded here in a balanced, well sourced manner that, in this case, does not propagate the lie that the Thirteen in the Continental Congress objected to paying their Imperial taxes for defense of the Empire in the same amounts, and to the same degree effecting their commerce, as every other realm alike within the British Empire. There was no Congressional opposition to pay equitable taxes for purposes "external" to each colony, including those for defense of the empire, including monies paid to defend the British Isles, where most of the North American colonial taxes to support the Royal Navy were always assigned to maintain a "Home Fleet" overseas from North America.

(4) "The Spanish dollar indeed was accepted as legal tender in the colonies", as was tobacco in hogshead barrels for the Dutch to smoke, and cured deerskins used for Frenchmen's hats. But no British Treasury accounts were kept in Spanish dollars, pounds of tobacco, or counts of deerskins, British imperial accounts for the North American colonies were kept in denominations of British pounds alone. We still are without a constructive "citation needed". TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 11:00, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

Spanish dollars were legal tender in the American colonies and accepted by colonial governments. (This was by order of Queen Anne, who was the last feudal tyrant before the Hanoverians.) AFAIK colonial subjects did not pay imperial taxes - it was when Britain decided to make them pay that they revolted. In any case the issue was not what was legal currency, but what is meant by saying the colonists "spent many millions." What currency do you think that refers to? How many millions is many millions? TFD (talk) 15:43, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

You won, you should find a citation or call for one from the contributing editor with a "citation needed" tag on the article page. Your work is done here. If you lack the common background knowledge assumed by a contributing editor, then please do note the passage with a "citation needed" tag.

(1) We know from scholar Alvin Rabushka's Policy Review article Aug-Sep 2002, that North American colonial "public accounts were kept in English sterling, in pounds (£)". The first Navigation Act was in 1651 based on the doctrine of mercantilism to “ensure a favorable balance of trade, accumulating bullion” for England. Efforts by the Thirteen colonial assemblies to stay liquid failed, their measures "failed to stem the export of coin to England".

- Colonial subjects paid indirect imperial taxes to royal customs officers in export taxes, import taxes, excise taxes and transfer duties for commodities imposed on tobacco at London (in additional to the off-load-and-reload expense there) before proceeding to Amsterdam.

(2) The Thirteen had increased their internal taxation into the millions of British pounds to retire their war debt successfully protecting the British North American Empire, despite the defeats of regular British Army forces. They increased their internal colonial poll taxes by a factor of 16 in some cases only because Parliament would not do so to defend its subjects in North America. The Thirteen colonial assemblies taxed individual wealth in the port cities for the duration of war to defend the Empire, whether at Queen Anne’s or the French and Indian.

- Parliament on the other hand, chose to float further public debt for military operations elsewhere in the empire without taxing their wealthiest landowners in the House of Lords to retire the English portion of the imperial debt. They chose to tax commerce empire-wide instead, for defense at the Channel, and in Europe overseas from North America. These also included imperial taxes collected in North American colonies by royal customs agents for import, export, excise and duty taxes.

(3) While the indirect Sugar Tax did bring in revenue to the British Treasury, the direct Stamp Act (internal to each of the Thirteen) was an abject failure, costing more to the Treasury to enforce it than the revenues it produced.

- By then Pitt as a the friend to the American Patriot cause, chided the Parliament in debate, that the Hanoverian cabinet in government was putting 2 million pounds sterling in trade at risk for a hundred thousand pounds of taxes, which they were unable to collect. Rabushka judged the unfolding development thusly, “for a failed tax, an empire was lost.” It would be just as Pitt had forewarned.

(4) NOT INCLUDED in our accounting to date is the colonial maintenance of surviving disabled veterans of empire: Vol. VI. p. 440. LAWS OF VIRGINIA, OCTOBER 1754−−28th GEORGE II. CHAP. II. An Act for raising levies and recruits to serve in the present expedition against the French, on the Ohio. - V. And be it further enacted, by the authority aforesaid, "That if any person or persons enlisted by virtue of this act, shall be so maimed or wounded, as to be rendered incapable of maintaining themselves, they shall, upon their return, be supported at the public expense." TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 09:52, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Query-to-editors: Enfranchisement in the Thirteen

Re: Enfranchisement in the Thirteen at the time of the Revolution:

In my primary source readings, Hening's "Statutes", I've come across an interesting factoid that I have not seen reflected in the North American colonial literature I've read yet.

- (a) The franchise was awarded to communicants in the Anglican church, who attended at least once a year which provided for Assembly-licensed local Presbyterian church members to vote who met that condition. (Giving a whole new meaning to "vote with their feet".) That was key to the charter-establishment some of the most westerly counties in the Great Valley for local government the tax collecting that followed - especially after the mass in-migration of Presbyterians at the First Great Awakening into Virginia.

- Successful propertied Presbyterians could subscribe to a neighborhood Anglican parish, and once the Anglican parish was established and funded by quitrents of the locality, the Assembly could lawfully create a new county with two Delegates to the House of Burgesses. (No taxation without representation, you see - not imperial tax-avoidance alone as the Beard-spouses mistakenly speculated in their eariest uncritiqued writings, and as one of us did so on this very Talk page as recently as this month.)

- I've not seen that non-Anglican enfranchisment surveyed and quantified for Virginia or elsewhere among the Thirteen with religious establishment, whether Anglican in the Southern Colonies or Congregational in New England (think Massachusetts with their counties of 'Maine' and 'Nova Scotia').

- (b) The franchise Virginia was awarded as one vote to several inhabitants, when their total acreage met the minimum standard set for "one vote" in the election of their Delegates to the lower House of Burgesses.

Vol. VII p. 519, Chap. I. An Act for directing and better regulating the elections of Burgesses, . . . V. Provided always, That where lands are held by several joint tenants, or tenants in common, or the interest of any such house and lot, or part of a lot, is or shall be divided among several persons, no more than one single vote shall be admitted in right of such lands, or house and lot, or part of a lot, and that only in case all the parties interested can agree

- This came to light researching the election law at the time of Patrick Henry's first election to the House of Burgesses, pursuant to a thumbnail biography I'm writing for Delegates sitting in the Virginia Ratification Convention, which I hope to contribute in expanding that Wikipedia article's sister bios for each delegate, including Patrick Henry, later US Senator Richard Henry Lee, against it, and James Madison, later Chief Justice John Marshall for it.

- Again, I've not seen that "multi-militia-one-vote" enfranchisment surveyed and quantified for Virginia or elsewhere among the Thirteen, think 'democratic' Pennsylvania with its Quaker traditions and Judge Wilson at the Constitutional Convention proposing direct popular election of the US President ('chief magistrate' in that floor debate).

QUERY - TO - EDITORS: Is there a source I can read so as to bring this article current with scholarship on "Voting in Colonial America"? TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 09:19, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

Spouses-Beard confusion & principled ARW

The spouses-Beard were apparently not well read into Virginia statutory law or contemporary 1770s planter economy in Virginia, the largest population in the North American colonies at the time. They theoretically surmised without surveying one of the two principal suppliers of soldiers and money to the Continental Congress (along with Massachusetts), that the primary motivating driver for representation in Parliament among the Thirteen must be attributable to an opportunistic self-dealing desire to cheat English tobacco factors, based on the spouses-Beard European-centered frame of reference.

- Though in some of their 1930s scholarship the spouse-Beard made a splash among the economic historians of an unnamed European tradition, they indiscriminately aggregated data of Loyalist and Patriot planters -- perhaps because they were unacquainted with plantation economy among Patriot-Cause Virginia gentry in the 1760s and 1770s who were increasingly wheat-export focused, and in the case of George Washington, dropping tobacco altogether in favor of direct cash sales in wheat markets of Bermuda and Bahamas with a one-week turnaround, rather than a month-long turnaround to England and further indebtedness to London tobacco factors while awaiting further sales on to Amsterdam. Or, they may have had an ideological axe to grind that explains their blind omission of George Washington(!) and others using a similar economic strategy on the Patriot side of the Revolution?

- The idea of "no taxation without representation" was not merely an artifact of convenience for tobacco debt-dodgers only, especially for those such as Washington and Jefferson selling wheat to English, French and Spanish Caribbean colonies via exchanges at British and Dutch Caribbean entrepôts, and directly to the German principalities in the Holy Roman Empire whenever they had a wheat-crop failure.

- At Hening's Statutes of the General Assembly in the Commonwealth of Virginia, Volume I, March 6, 1655-6, ACT XVI.

"WHEREAS we conceive it something hard and unagreeable to reason that any persons shall pay equal taxes and yet have no votes in elections, Therefore it is enacted by this present Grand Assembly, That so much of the act for choosing Burgesses be repealed as excludes freemen from votes, Provided always that they fairly give their votes by subscription and not in a tumultuous way . . ."

- That is to say, prior to Royal Governor Berkeley's oppressions, the Virginia General Assembly expressly endorsed the commonplace principle among all free men (later restricted to one "householder" per family), those with all the rights of "Englishmen at home" --- whether or not colonial "amalgamations" of English, Welch, Scots, Irish, German, Dutch or French protestant origin and their families' intermarriage --- to have "votes in elections" whenever they are "equally taxed".

- The Euro-centric POV that presumes the North American colonists would have no principled interest in voting for elections in legislatures such as the Hanoverian Parliament attempting to innovate --- direct taxation of individual freemen without representation there --- is merely ideological blinders -- ignoring the 17th century 1656 Virginia statute that restated the ancient ideal as a matter of commonly held principle, policy and law, one-hundred-and-twenty (120) years before the American Revolutionary War.

- The lie that there is no principled American Revolutionary War should not be admitted into the ARW narrative as "balanced historical narrative" when it is demonstrably either weasel-worded polemic, or Euro-imperial puffery. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 11:25, 25 April 2021 (UTC)

Idiosyncratic 'K' reference

The ‘ReferenceK’ convention for footnotes that is implicitly proposed without discussion in the Rsjaffe post [4] cannot be adopted for this lengthy article at ARW. While the editor's good contributions are welcome and left in place, the three instances of ‘ReferenceK’ coding is removed.

The ‘K’ convention in general can be stated this way: ‘Reference[one-letter for first 26 notes], followed by ‘Reference[two-letters for notes 27-53], will be followed by a sequential series of fifteen more letters to reach 428 notes. In a short article with fewer than 26 footnotes, the 'K' convention is an elegant example of the code-writer’s art, demonstrating a conservation in total key strokes held by the Wikipedia article file. But the editorial choice for the American Revolutionary War article is to find a footnote convention that can be uniformly applied for 428 citations from 300+ sources in a transparent way for fact-checkers..

While scanning the article inline without a split screen, the reader-researcher, or a reviewer to upgrade the article status to Good Article, cannot readily distinguish at a glance the difference in sourcing between note “ReferenceKKKKKKKK”, and “ReferenceKKKKKKKK”. There are always new footnote additions, so the letter sequencing will be ever-changing, were it to be maintained by someone so that anyone could check behind the article editors to find the twenty-odd ‘orphan’ sources in the Bibliography without footnotes in the article, citations to corporate webpages to buy commercial products, etc. that befouled the Bibliography at ARW two years ago.

But for Wikipedia’s lengthier articles, there are also issues of scholarship to consider in an open contribution online encyclopedia used by researchers. Conjuring an opaque system of a dozen letter-strings just makes it impossible to find and check the accuracy of the bibliography and footnoting in the article. Last month there was an editor ‘blitz’ to review and upgrade military articles, but glitches like the ‘K’ idiosyncrasy palsied the feint of heart across the entirety of an otherwise very active editor community. The last brave-heart insisted on a Euro-centric definition of warfare, but he fell exhausted after six months in his attempt to extinguish all reference to 'non-state combatants' such as "American Indians" and "Hessians" in the Infobox of the American Revolutionary War that are akin to the "Lincoln Brigade" in the Spanish Civil War Infobox.

Aside: The parting shot by the contrarian was to remove the Project 'B' status for this article in his project to a 'Start' class. Now that I have been a member of that project for six months, it may be time for me to restore the project's B status rating assigned by the previous project editor familiar with the scholarly field of the subject, by reference to the previous B-awarding editor's post, of course. It will take some digging, but the article is very much more stable than this time last year. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 10:58, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Noted and agreed. AutoWikiBot has its own mind, and decided on the ReferenceK convention, for some bizarre reason. I'll give the bot a good talking to, and maybe it won't be so forward with the referencing convention. :-) --Rsjaffe (talk) 21:05, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Many thanks for your considerate response. Sorry to sort of 'unload' on you like that - perhaps over-much; I may be a bit battle-tested and battle-scarred over the past two years. It's good to find a like-minded Wikipedian. It remains a great hobby for the amateur historian, retired. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 06:00, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

Declaration of Independence

please change ((Declaration of Independence)) to ((United States Declaration of Independence|Declaration of Independence)) 2601:541:4580:8500:71A3:1387:E277:A917 (talk) 22:54, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

 Done — IVORK _Talk 23:04, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

Polish support

Tadeusz Kościuszko, Casimir Pulaski, some 1,000 Polish troops who fought in the war, August Franz Globensky, Haym Salomon, and Jan Kwiryn de Mieszkowski are not mentioned. _TheKuygerian^contribs
_userpage 20:10, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

This thread is very much worth pursuing. Good initiative, it needs to be researched, expanded & adopted . . .

- On first look, the WP August Franz Globensky needs some sourcing revision to standardized bibliography and footnotes, but the June 7, 2011 citation from a then dead URL is now reactivated and revised in a live URL at the "August Franciszek Głąbiński" article in the PWN Internet Encyclopedia available on a Chrome browser in English translation, May 30, 2021.

- If we were to synthesize the existing WP passage from the archived URL site, and the revised entry available online now, it seems at British army surrender, rather than joining the "Convention Army" meant to return to Europe by the terms of Burgoyne's surrender at Saratoga, Globensky chose parole to Quebec. The ill fated 'Convention Army' was held imprisoned until the end of the war by order of the Continental Congress. Surgeon Globensky opted to parole to Verchères, Quebec. There he married a Canadienne, initiated a medical practice 'around [1776]', and ran the pharmacy in Saint-Eustache from 1778. He chartered ownership of the pharmacy in Saint-Eustache in 1791, making it the first Polish enterprise in Canada.

I hope to take this research up later today and tomorrow. Good work, User The Kuygerian! TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 07:52, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

Infobox updates

This Memorial Day, I took the time to upgrade two elements of the ARW Infobox.

The first is at British "Treaty Auxiliaries", a) simplification of the text as there is mention made of the distinction between the princely-mercenaries versus involuntary-soldiering auxiliaries in the linked WP articles and referenced reliable sources; and b) a representation of flags for the two German principalities accounting for 85% of British Treaty troops serving in North America, while maintaining the [show] complete list of all those participants with the British in the American Revolutionary War.

The second is expansion of the Congressional "Combatants" who included British Francophone Catholic Canadiens organized in a) two regiments of "Congress' Own Regiment" COGs, the 1st Canadian Regiment and the 2nd Canadian Regiment [their flags differed in lettering colors and motto, but only one image is available at Wikimedia]; and b) an independent militia drawn from the western most populations of Ohio County, Virginia who were led by the Frenchman Augustin de La Balme.

- Colonel La Balme reported his movements in the portions of Western Quebec that would become most of the US Northwest Territory to the French ambassador to the Continental Congress independently of Washington's command and control, as had Colonel George Rogers Clark of the Virginia militia operated independently of Continental command before him. La Balme's militia flew a French flag in his advance on Detroit, which ended at La Balme's Defeat by Little Turtle, who subsequently became a war chief of the Algonquin Miami for his exploits in the Eel River assault. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 21:02, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

Last para edits in ‘British defeat in the United States’

UPDATE June 16. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 07:17, 16 June 2021 (UTC) The last paragraph in the ARW section, “British defeat in America” has been rewritten to reflect the ARW scope, which uses the word "America" to reference the War of the United States of America "American" Independence.

Footnoting and bibliography citations were today revised consistent with the convention adopted for the ARW article to facilitate its review to gain Good Article status; some additional footnoting may still be called for, I invite editors to note wherever a “footnote needed” tag is appropriate, “common knowledge” may not cover everything new. Thanks in advance. The revised last paragraph now reads as follows:

Subsequent to Yorktown, American forces were assigned to supervise the armistice between Washington and Clinton made to facilitate British departure following the January 1782 law of Parliament forbidding any further British offensive action in North America. British-American negotiations in Paris led to preliminaries signed November 1782 acknowledging US independence. The enacted Congressional war aim for British withdrawal from the its North American claims to be ceded to the US was completed for the coastal cities in stages.[284]

In the South, Generals Greene and Wayne loosely invested the withdrawing British at Savanna and Charleston. There they observed the British finally taking off their regulars from Charleston December 14, 1782.[285] Loyalist provincial militias of whites and free blacks, as well as Loyalists with their slaves were transported in a relocation to Nova Scotia and the British Caribbean.[ah] Native American allies of the British and some freed blacks were left to escape through the American lines unaided.

Washington moved his army to New Windsor on the Hudson River about sixty miles north of New York City,[286] and there the substance of the American army was furloughed home with officers at half pay until the Treaty of Paris formally ended the war on September 3, 1783. At that time, Congress decommissioned the regiments of Washington’s Continental Army and began issuing land grants to veterans in the Northwest Territories for their war service. The last of the British occupation of New York City ended on November 25, 1783 with the departure of Clinton's replacement, General Sir Guy Carleton.[287]

Endnote [ah]: In Nova Scotia, a province that had been a Massachusetts county in the 1600s, British settlement of freed black Loyalists from the American Revolutionary War secured its Canadian claim there. Britain continued its last "Bourbon War" with the French and Spanish primarily amidst their mutually conflicting territorial claims adjacent the Caribbean Sea including Jamaica, adjacent the Mediterranean Sea including Gibraltar and Isla Mallorca, and adjacent the Indian Ocean during the Second Mysore War.

Deleted is a reference to a personal website that is NOT a scholarly peer reviewed reliable source; it is not suitable for use in a Wikipedia article: <ref>https://allthingsliberty.com/2014/10/anthony-waynes-1782-savannah-campaign/</ref>.

Deleted is an unsourced POV passage off-topic to the article. Following the furlough of the Continental Army and the sale or gifting of the US Navy to retire war debt, there were no further military operations in the War of American Independence, the topic and focus of this article.

- Efforts to expand the ARW article into a comprehensive account of worldwide British Empire foreign policy and its overseas adventures are remiss whenever they are found to be a) unsourced, b) unreliably sourced, or c) topically unrelated to Congress in rebellion and US independence, and d) unrelated to North America and trade with the Thirteen Colonies in rebellion.

- There is no sourcing provided to connect the ARW to Spanish operations in Spain for the Spanish Government under command of Spanish Generals without coordination or correspondence with Continental Congress or its officers, in the same way as Bernardo Galvez, Governor of Spanish Luisiana, had during the American Revolutionary War. The Spanish contribution to the American Revolutionary War is addressed in the ARW Infobox, and in the section Western cammpaign. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 10:39, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

Looks good, and I agree. As you must know this article once ventured away from the actual fight for American independence, with dozens of links and text covering remote battles overseas things that had nothing to do with the actual fight for independence. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 19:10, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

Removal of reference names - post here and RFC

• I’ve reverted seven edits by User:Finnaboing here. He misidentified OPEN SOURCE notation as "redundant". But the readily intelligible notation is required for a Good Article review of a long article. Replacing the ARW consensus notation with unsystematic and incoherent notation means sourcing cannot be easily followed by a reviewer during an inline read of an article passage.

- At User talk:Finnaboing#Reference names, Finnaboing's rationale is that a convoluted abstracted referencing system with indecipherable masking of paragraph sourcing can "save keystrokes" --- although as previously demonstrated here, that is not always the case in citations supporting one or two footnotes as we have seen in previous edits, then explained here at Talk without any rebuttal.

- This undiscussed article disruption of the ARW article violates consensus practice there, and is further challenged by User:Mjroots at RFC at WT:CS#RFC on removal of reference names re this issue.

- Mjroots, a "Grandmaster Editor First-Class" with 112,000 edits and 14 years service, requests at Finnaboing Talk, "Whilst consensus is being formed, would you [Finnaboing] please not remove any further reference names from articles? I'm not looking for any sanctions to be applied for past behaviour re this issue, but to establish consensus on whether or not the practice should be allowed in future." @Finnaboing: I concur. -- whoops, a masked editor unreachable with a ping!

- As Mjroots explains at the RFC, "Even if a reference is only used once, it is handy to have it named. Another editor may come along later and insert material so that the reference now needs to be used more than once. If it is named, then it is a simple matter of re-using the existing name. Without a name, the editor then needs to give the reference a name, and maybe also check for other uses of that reference elsewhere in the article."

Editor discussion is welcome at the RFC at WT:CS#RFC on removal of reference names especially as it relates to masking article sourcing in ARW-like long articles that have yet to be reviewed for Good Article status. s/TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 13:22, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

• I’ve reverted several edits by User:Rsjaffe here. He misidentified consensus footnoting convention here as "typos" mimicking alternative footnoting by User:Finnaboing that cannot be systematically applied to a long article as is ARW as discussed in the earlier section here at Talk.

- Both editors are pinged here to invite them to discuss here and at the RFC at WT:CS#RFC on removal of reference names. s/TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 10:10, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

SUCCESS - Cewbot assist with footnotes

Cewbot has altered several footnotes here, with unambiguously good results for a bot, thank you. Granular style alignment for capitalization of ref-names is unnecessary micro-management, imho.

SEVEN (7) kinds of improvements, with a multiple of that for its total “assists” here at ARW.

(a) correcting (4) ref-name typos several times – unambiguously good, thank you.

(b) correcting ref-name mis-dated original publication replacing reprint date – unambiguously good, thank you.

(c) correcting (2) ref-name without a date – unambiguously good, thank you.

(d) correcting ref-name citation reading author’s name “rossman” spelling, to misspelling ref-name in Bibliography ‘rosssman2016’ which corrected an otherwise broken footnote link. – unambiguously good, thank you.

(e) correcting error-ref-name to article author versus correct editor of essay collection

(f) to align footnotes with ref-names in Bibliography sites, uncapitalizing a ref-name from Glatthaar to glatthaar, likewise for baer, syrett, whiteley – unambiguously good, thank you -- and capitalizing from deane2018 to Deane2018, Black , Burke,

(g) to align footnotes with ref-names in Bibliography sites, changed ‘conway1995’ to ‘conway’.

s/TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 12:02, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Vandalism at Aftermath section, Territory subsection

At Aftermath#Territory, there is a second attempt to disrupt the article prior to discussion on this Talk page by User talk:EnoughApologetics2 posted here. The contribution is meant to be removed when it is true and reliably sourced. The narrative reports reliably sourced information, but the vandalism makes an unsourced accusation that it is "false". These two posts are by an obscure EnoughApologetics2 editor, unavailable by ping.

The false claim at the post, is that no Indian lands for forts were ever ceded to either the French or the British in North America prior to the Anglo-American 1783 Treaty of Paris, which ceded British-claimed territory to the US, west to the Mississippi River including territory that Britain had acquired from France at the 1763 Anglo-French Treaty of Paris.

The narrative passage "Though British forts on their lands had been ceded to either the French or the British prior to the creation of the United States,[406] Natives were not referred to in the British cession to the US..."; Note #406 in that revision as a citation to reference the Treaty of Greenville] held at Yale's Avalon website.

Treaty Article 3 enumerates Indian cessions to the United States in a couple dozen locations, such as forts, trading posts, and river landings, along with variously parceled land, generally of 2-6 miles square (4-36 square miles), ” which the Indian title has been extinguished by gifts or grants to the French or English governments”.

This observation by a contributing editor directly from the primary document without any interpretation required - - does NOT require drawing a conclusion in violation of WP:Primary. The narrative only conveys what is stated literally in the document, and no more. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 18:33, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Fort Miami, one of the three British-held forts in the Old Northwest, was built in 1794, after the creation of the United States; it could not have been ceded to the French or British "prior to the creation of the United States". It is true that Article 3 of the Treaty of Greenville states that the tribes of the Old Northwest had already ceded two of the British-held forts in the Old Northwest, Fort Detroit and Michilimackinac, to France and Britain, but it makes no such claim about Fort Miami. Therefore, the existing text is clearly wrong. EnoughApologetics2 (talk) 18:57, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

Repeated article interference -- without vetting unsourced assertions at an article's Talk -- or just generally making false assertions against well founded facts is wp:disruption. As you must know given your self assurance in repeatedly overwriting editor consensus narrative,

The 1794 British Fort Miami -- violating the Anglo-American 1783 Treaty of Paris to expand British influence into territory ceded to a "sovereign and independent" US to arm Indian proxies conducting raids on US settlement -- was located on the Maumee River nearby Lake Erie, and that is NOT THE SAME FORT as the previously-built French fort built sixty (60) years PRIOR TO British-treaty acknowledgement of US independence.

The 1722 French Fort Miami referred to in the Treaty of Greenville was at the confluence of the St. Joseph River and the St. Marys River, which is considerably upriver and also west of the State of Ohio when it was admitted. At Article 3, enumeration 5, "One piece six miles square [36 square miles], at or near the confluence of the rivers St. Mary's and St. Joseph's, where fort Wayne now stands, or near it."

And again, at Article 4, 3rd enumeration, refers to "The lands at ALL other places in possession of the French people and other white settlers among them, of which the Indian title has been extinguished as mentioned in the 3d article…" TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 19:45, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

So you agree! Fort Miami (Ohio), which the British built and occupied in 1794, did not stand on the site of any previous fort. The tribes never ceded it to either France or Britain, and it was erected after the creation of the United States. Therefore, the article's statement that "British forts on their lands had been ceded to either the French or the British prior to the creation of the United States" is false in reference to one of the forts which the British occupied in the Old Northwest after the American Revolutionary War, and should be deleted. EnoughApologetics2 (talk) 20:23, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

A statement that is 95% true by enumerated count is not FALSE, it is INCOMPLETE, a modifying clause needs to be added, perhaps with an additional source.

The solution in an encyclopedia dedicated to widely distributed knowledge is not to extinguish information, it is to perfect it by multiple-editor contributions. Let’s put your one example among two dozen in better context for the Fort Miami (Ohio) that you point out for the newly imposed, post-peace-treaty British-Canadian territorial aggression against the US.

- viz: "Though British forts on their lands had been ceded to either the French or the British prior to the creation of the United States,[1] Natives were not referred to in the British cession to the US.

"While tribes were not consulted by the British for the treaty, in practice the British refused to abandon the forts on territory they formally transferred. Instead, they provisioned military allies for continuing frontier raids and sponsored the Northwest Indian War (1785–1795), including erecting an additional British Fort Miami (Ohio)."

- Omitted, but TRUE for a Canadian-like "nicety" balance: ...additional Fort Miami (Ohio)...to further the persistent British-Canadian territorial expansion and imperial aggression against the US in concert with the Spanish, who had recently turned against the French in the interests of their monarchial family making common war with the British Crown against the republics of the world (in the 1790s-1810s). TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 08:36, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm afraid that your new edit did not alter the sentence "Though British forts on their lands had been ceded to either the French or the British prior to the creation of the United States", which you have now admitted is inaccurate. The addition of a later mention of Fort Miami's construction does not fix the inaccuracy of this sentence, which should still be changed. EnoughApologetics2 (talk) 12:43, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Removal of the now perfected paragraph is  Not done. The 95% has been made 100% correct. Neither the (incomplete) knowledge, nor the (perfected) knowledge are false, neither reliably sourced information should be extinguished at Wikipedia. My edit here met the overstated objection by EnoughApologetics2. The previous statement standing alone was correct as far as it went at 94.7% accuracy (1 / 19 = 05.3), taking the nineteen explicitly enumerated forts and landings and the portages in between PREVIOUSLY ceded by resident Indian tribes to the French and to the English by their appointed negotiating CHIEFS.

- The paragraph has now been PERFECTED – so, now the sentence in the context of its paragraph taken together, the statement you have arbitrarily chosen to isolate and take out of context is 100% TRUE.

- Those forts ceded by Indians to French and British were ceded by Britain to the US by the Anglo-American 1783 Treaty of Paris. The British re-established their territorial dominion inside the ceded borders of the Old Northwest when they (a) reoccupied forts previously garrisoned in the Revolutionary War, and (b) built new ones as a part of an invasion of the US comparable to Russian occupation of eastern Ukraine, which also claims native resident militias establish a “buffer”.

- EnoughApologetics2 is not anywhere authorized to dumb down the narrative at Wikipedia BELOW 5th-grade US reading level, nor is he entitled to do so by an editor consensus here.

s/ TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 11:27, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Further challenges: origins of 1785 Indian War, Indian petitions

With regard to your other claims: the U.S. triggered the Northwest Indian War by launching a massive raid against the Shawnee, after offering them assurances of friendship. During the raid, the Kentucky militia killed fleeing non-combatants, before murdering and scalping a leading pro-American chieftain after he surrendered. More generally, it treated the tribes of the Old Northwest as conquered peoples (even though they had been excluded from the Treaty of Paris), forced them to sell their lands, and allowed settlers to illegally move onto land that they had refused to sell. . The article should be modified to mention the role that Kentuckian atrocities and American expansionism played in causing the Northwest Indian War.

Moreover, as the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Alan Taylor describes in The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution (Knopf: New York, 2006), pages 113 - 114, the tribes asked the British to continue to occupy their forts in the Old Northwest in order to protect them against American efforts to expel them from their lands. The British, in turn, sought to create a neutral buffer zone in the Old Northwest under the control of the tribes of the region, to defend the southern flank of Upper Canada. I must admit that I don't understand how trying to create a neutral zone to protect indigenous peoples against forced displacement can be described as "territorial expansion" or "imperial aggression".EnoughApologetics2 (talk) 12:43, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

Sourced scholarly Grand Tactical analysis for historiography is not what the historic actors said. The express purpose of the historical actors making the requests for military aid from the British Empire was NOT either (1) "to protect [existing Indian settlements] from American efforts to expel them from their lands [in the Old Northwest], NOR (2) "create a neutral zone... under the control of the tribes of the region, to defend the southern flank of Upper Canada" to aid and abet British foreign policy and diplomacy with the United States Congress.

- Tehcumseh and Menawa declared their INTENDED use of the Imperial military aid was to administer a pan-Indian FORCEABLE REMOVAL of all WHITES, to be perpetrated on the previous French, British and American settlements IN THE REGIONS of the Old Northwest, and OUTSIDE THE AREAS UNDER 'CONFEDERACY' CONTROL: south of the Ohio River and east to the crest of the Appalachian Mountains to a status quo ante circa 1720. That's the international definition of "genocide".

- British Imperial aid flowed to notable leaders advocating white genocide in the entire Mississippi Valley, such as "war chiefs" Techumseh and Menawa who were self-declared making war for genocide. British military was also supplied to recognized tribes seeking preservation goals against squatter settlements with traditionally appointed werowances and sachems such as among the Seneca and the Upper Creek Muscogee. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 11:27, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

There are plenty of articles about the American Indian wars. They should be out of scope in this article, with only the briefest of mention to help put the ARW in historical context (causes and effects). Canute (talk) 17:00, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

Several wrongs by the “White Man” may be stipulated

Several wrongs may be stipulated here for linked reference in the American Revolutionary War article for elaboration elsewhere in related articles. These wrongs by various individuals, groups, and as policy by English and UK imperial and colonial, US national and state agents, of the “White Man” perpetrated on indigenous races and language groups among the “Native Americans”. The perpetrators include the subjects of the British Empire and among citizens of the US 1775 Continental Congress, the US 1781 Articles of Confederation, and the US 1789 Constitution.

1. CULTURALLY, it is an indelible mark of Anglo-American shame that the Native Americans who were military allies of the US were not protected from US-state sponsored or atrocities unpunished in state courts. The Philadelphia 1763 Paxton Boys who would stop a [Native American] farmer in the field to ask for directions, tricking the man at the plow to be complicit in his own death by acting out of common decency to passersby and walking towards the stranger. Benjamin Franklin wrote a famous condemnation of the Paxton Boy cowardice and immoral atrocity reenacted over dozens of times in settled Pennsylvania farmland well away from the western frontier of the time.

2. As an ENGLISH and BRITISH COLONIES, it is an indelible mark of shame on MA and NY that the Mohican tribe was not preserved east of the Mississippi River. In the book, The Last of the Mohicans (set in 1757), their alliance called on all warriors to answer the Governor’s call to make war on the enemies of the British Crown. They virtually all did so until there was, in this bit of American literature, a “Last Mohican”. --- In American history, the Mohican settlement at Stockbridge MA relocated to Wisconsin in the 1820s. See Indian Country Today article.

The historical novel by James Fenimore Cooper, was popular in 1826, and later qualified one of the first American writers to receive serious (post mortem) critical acclaim in Europe. In the plot, the three-way (platonic in the book) romance of a white woman with an English officer and a Mohican warrior led the reader to understand the Mohican of the book was a better man than the Englishman, by moral compass, courage, and devotion, the Indian’s race and other-culture notwithstanding.

CONTEXT: In 1826 during the rise of Andrew Jackson, an American political commonplace contrary to the message of the ‘Mohicans’ book was, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian”. Mark Twain, who supported Native American tribal extinction in the 1880s, was highly critical of the work and wrote two literary screeds panning it.

3. NATIONALLY, It is an indelible mark of shame that US military allies were not better provided for and protected, such as the Oneida tribe who had warriors attached as scouts to the Continental Army, and one week literally kept the camps at Valley Forge from disbanding for food by their delivering several boats of white corn. Oneida (and other) Tribal representatives should be honored Presidential guests in the White House reviewing stand every Fourth of July parade, imho.

s/TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 11:27, 3 August 2021 (UTC) TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 19:02, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Not sure where we're going with this, but I would be very cautious about adding morality sermons in a history article. Canute (talk) 16:58, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

Re: comments in threads above, I wanted to make clear, I will not defend the morally indefensible. I wanted to make a point parallel to that of Canute. Likewise, Imperial British apologists (with their Wiki-editor POV), should not try to make this article into a screed against "Manifest Destiny" of the 1800s Jacksonian Democrats occurring half-a-century later. They may protest their POV "imperial American colonialism" (sic) elsewhere. Anachronism is bad history.

On the other hand, there were Indian nations during the War of 1812 which abrogated their US peace treaty to join common cause to war against the US. They then lost in that war while militarily allied to the British who withdrew from the conquered and occupied US territory. Then those Indian tribe British proxies were mostly abandoned by the British at the peace table and everywhere on British-ceded US territory.

Although some British imperial reservations were carved out of Canada for survivor British proxies from the War of 1812, they were inadequate to the need. The defeated and abandoned tribes could not have reasonably imagined the victor to honor immunities and protections once guaranteed by treaty prior to the lost war from the government that they warred against and then lost.

Again as before there must be an historical distinction between atrocities committed by Pennsylvania and Kentucky militia against Indian Christian settlements and traditional tribes, versus the conduct of the US Army during the period under study, 1810-1820.

I am familiar with editor POV that the Confederacy never formally surrendered, so all its 'citizens' and descendants need not submit to USG sovereignty within its borders, but I am unpersuaded with that argument generally. Nor as it may be applied to other regimes defeated in war. The post-WWII United Nations hoped to cut through much of the world's "hereditary hatred" by recognizing all existing borders at the territorial settlements ending WWII.

The British did not allow Indian tribes or Techumseh's renegade warriors in pan-Indian Prophetstown any elective or appointed representation in the peace deliberations ratified in Parliament. Recall the British had granted representation to the Scots, only teased the Irish, and refused their American colonists. The English really never ever have lost their permanent majority in Parliament, regardless of any changes in governing coalition party. No exception was made for Native Americans either, it should not be supposed by any editor to have been so in this article, not even as British Imperial POV "morality sermons in a history article.", i.e., "The Indian tribes invited the British-Canadians to defend their lands." TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 17:45, 8 August 2021 (UTC) TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 19:02, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

TheVirginiaHistorian, are you seriously discussing "the conduct of the US Army during the period under study, 1810-1820." in this article? Much of your text seems to have nothing to do with either the American Revolutionary War or the Atlantic Revolutions. Dimadick (talk) 14:48, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm really confused with this entire topic. Canute (talk) 15:46, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

Brilliantly led astray; Rats! I'll try to be more careful in the future. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 19:02, 12 August 2021 (UTC)