"American reactions to the hiring of German soldiers by Great Britain are perhaps best summarized by quoting the passage from the Declaration of Independence in which the King is assailed for 'transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death., desolation, and tyranny already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation."'
By the summer of 1776, Americans feared and despised the arriving German auxiliary forces, so what accounted for the fact that many Germans remained in America? The Declaration's strong message to the British certainly represented a great wall of hatred against their instruments of death-the German auxiliaries. As a cultural and political wall of separation, Germans in the latter stages of their submission often scaled the wall for reasons explored herein. After fighting in most of the battles for eight years, living within a hostile environment and enduring significant hardships, many German soldiers, favorably impressed with the American way of life over the "Old Country," decided to remain when their countrymen sailed for home. Researchers have combed the German archives for evidence of the number of desertions. Historians have arrived at five thousand soldiers as a consensus. "At least twelve hundred of the German mercenaries were killed and an estimated 6,354 died [from other causes],"3 recorded George Washington Greene in his book published in 1876, using records compiled directly from the archives in Germany researched by Doctor Friedrich Kapp. Greene reported 29,766 soldiers sent by "wicked rulers" with 17, 313 returning. Therefore, over 23 percent of the Germans stayed in America. Why did almost thirty thousand German soldiers representing between 33 and 37 percent of the proportion of British strength in America from 1778 through 1781 come to America to fight a rival country's war? On the other side of the coin, since these soldiers were oppressed servants, why did not a higher percentage of them desert?
Greene called them wicked rulers and Robert H. Lowie wrote, "The Duke of Hesse-Casse1 . . . felt no Christian scruples. . . about trafficking in the blood of his subjects."6 The princes were greedy, selling their subjects to the highest paymaster, and their primary goal was "how to fill their ranks and keep them full." For many of these principalities, this was a way of life that had evolved over many years of warring. The idea of soldiers as a "merchandisable commodity was not revolting to the German mind at that time."e Stephan Popp remarked in his journal, "Some of the soldiers were glad., and r was of the number, for r trad long wanted to see something of the world." Johann Gottfried Seurne was forced into the Hessian military after being declared a vagrant despite his university education and family background. In order to fill the ranks, the princes often kidnapped university students, drunks, and vagrants. In sum, Germans most often had no choice in the matter of military servitude. However, some adventurous men like Popp, willingly boarded the ships for the difficult voyage to fight the "rebels."
The war for independence waged in 1835-1836 by Texas freedom fighters was in my opinion primarily necessitated by Mexican decrees abolishing slavery within its frontier states. Mexican hegemony in the area included an anti-slavery strategy in its new order of 1835 that erroneously depended upon actual slave insurrections as a military tool for creating an offensive against Texas militia.
To what extent was Benjamin Franklin responsible for the first two treaties between France and America? Although an American victory at the battle of Saratoga and other factors contributed to the signing of the first two Franco-American treaties, a preponderance of the evidence points to Benjamin Franklin as the linchpin for the meld of national interests.
Modern theorists such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Locke were also contemplated. Professor William E. Nelson (1987, 466-67) writing exactly two hundred years after the Constitutional Convention says that in order to capture the spirit of reason at the Convention one needs to refer to Rousseau’s concept of the general will
The president of the United States is the most powerful person on the face of the earth. Although the average American inattentively appraises presidential leadership, the president’s standing and legacy depends upon our consensus.
Charlie Company's lst Platoon commanded by Lieutenant William I. Calley was expecting trouble on March 16, 1968 when they were landed in the "Pinkville" area, located within Quang Ngai province in South Vietnam. They had been conducting "search and destroy" missions within the province without finding the Vietcong.
The war for independence waged in 1835-1836 by Texas freedom fighters was in my opinion primarily necessitated by Mexican decrees abolishing slavery within its frontier states. Mexican hegemony in the area included an anti-slavery strategy in its new order of 1835 that erroneously depended upon actual slave insurrections as a military tool for creating an offensive against Texas militia.
Texas Native
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