Black Hawk : The Battle for the Heart of America (9781466860926) by Trask Kerry A

Author:Trask, Kerry A.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Macmillan

9

THE GREAT FEAR

A wide frontier had been laid naked by this unexpected disaster, and more substantial evils were preceded by a thousand fanciful and imaginary dangers.

James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans

FROM THE VERY first bloodshed of the Revolution, the citizen-soldier in the ranks of the militia—the minuteman at Lexington and Concord—became a vital figure in the country’s emerging national mythology. The thousands of common men, who appeared to emulate the brave and admirable example of Cincinnatus, and who left their plows and families behind to take up arms to defend the homeland against the English king’s mercenary thugs, were thought to be ideal citizens who arose to become ideal soldiers, inspiring pride and patriotism throughout the land. They became the ideological metaphors that made the defense of life and liberty every man’s responsibility, at the same time democratizing the honors of war by offering ordinary men the opportunity to become heroes. Although highly idealized, the winning of the Revolution, through what appeared to be the triumph of the armed common men over the professional armies of the British state, seemed to validate the whole romantic notion about the superiority of the citizen-soldier fighting for a noble cause, and that belief soon became an important influence on the way Americans thereafter viewed war.

Those views were strongly reinforced by the tales told about the Battle of New Orleans, which described how ordinary American farmers and sharpshooting frontiersmen, although greatly outnumbered and under-equipped, took on a grand force of the British king’s most elite troops. The rigorously trained and disciplined invaders, in fancy uniforms, were said to be veterans of Wellington’s wars against Bonaparte. All smartly marching in well-disciplined step to the sound of the pipes and drums, they were led into battle by one of the king’s most accomplished generals. And yet once again it was the citizen-soldiers who triumphed. In the smoke and fury of that armed struggle only seventy Americans were lost, while more than two thousand British soldiers went dead, wounded, and missing. It was a euphorically inspirational moment for the young Republic, and in accounting for the great victory considerable credit was given to the strong character of self-made American men, whose very lack of discipline and regimentation, along with their rebellious attitudes toward authority, were all hailed as virtues that contrasted them with, and made them better men than, the rigid and obedient redcoats who marched unwaveringly like sheep to the slaughter.1

Those images shone brightly in the imaginations of the men who rode with John Reynolds and Samuel Whiteside up the valley of the Rock River in pursuit of Black Hawk and his British Band. They fit their own mythological illusions of themselves. They were, after all, soldiers of the most amateur sort, without uniforms, without drill, discipline, or training, and under the command of men like themselves, democratically elected to their positions of authority and possessing little knowledge or experience in the difficult business of organizing and leading large numbers of men in the perilous work of mass violence.

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