"Eight Thousand men in arms..."

Toren Smith has been kind enough to link to a post I made back on the 23rd, dealing with an excerpt of a letter I ran across in the book Quaker Records in Georgia edited by Robert Scott Davis. I thought it might be interesting to examine it a bit more closely in light of H.D. Miller's comments over at Travelling Shoes, particularly the one dealing with The Allusions of Z. Moussaoui, in which H.D. notes that:

Arabic speakers are immersed from birth in two deep streams of immensely beautiful, immensely difficult literary Arabic, the Qu'ran and Classical Arabic poetry, in much the same way that at one time English speakers were immersed in Shakespeare and the King James Version of the Bible.

Whenever you read 18th Century letters or text in English, it pays to be a bit circumspect in their interpretation. Meanings change over time, and exactness sometimes takes a backseat to literary effect. Oftentimes when reading soldier's letters or official accounts, someone might mention that the soldiers were "naked"--in most cases this doesn't mean "not a stitch of clothing," but "not enough clothing to be considered fully dressed by polite society." A man without an outer coat and waistcoat could be accurately described, at least in their way of putting it, as naked. Likewise, for a soldier it could also mean "not having his full complement of arms and accouterments." A soldier might be described as naked if he did not have his musket and cartridge box. Other examples include observations of battles in which thousands are said to be fighting, when actual muster rolls may indicate only a few hundred--in most instances, this is sort of like the wildly varying crowd estimates at events like the Million Man March. The basic idea is that there were a bunch, and more than any little piddling bunch. Literary license is granted in most cases, and was understood as such by most readers of the time.

Given this tiny bit of exposition, it might be good to revisit that quote, this time paying a bit more attention to the context and the ideas which are meant to be gathered. Again, this quote is from a letter written in 1775 by a 17 year old Orkney boy named Baikia Harvey, an indentured servant in Friendsborough, Georgia:

The Americans are Smart Industrious hardy people & fears nothing. our people is only Like the New Negroes that comes out of the ships at first whin they come amongst them. I am Just returned from the Back parts where I seed Eight Thousand men in arms all with Riffeld Barrill guns which they can kill the Bigness of a Dollar Between Two & three Hundreds yards Distance. the Little Boys not Bigger than my self has all thir guns & marches with thir Fathers & all thir Cry is Liberty or Death. Dear Godfather tell all my Country people not to come here for the Americans will Kill them Like Deer in the Woods & they will never see them. they can lie on thir backs & load & fire & every time they Draw sight at any thing they are sure to kill or Creple & they run in the Woods like Horses.

How best to interpret this?

First, remember that this young man had left the Orkneys as a 16 year old and had gone to a wilderness. He was probably lonely, weary, and homesick, and since he was in east-central Georgia, he had lived through a whole 9 month long summer of stifling heat.

From the letter it is pretty obvious that he is impressed by the Americans he has met who have managed to thrive in such an environment. As to his trip to the "back parts," the number of the men he saw must be seen as a stretch in a literal sense--there were not eight thousand free white men total in the unsettled back country of Georgia and South Carolina at this time (some estimates put the number of men eligible for military service in Georgia at about 3,000 in 1775)--but looking at it from his point of view, there were more angry armed men than he could begin to count. Not just a few, not just many, but more than there were peas in the cookpot or corn in the crib--a huge number, thousands even. If a number was actually taken, though, the eight thousand were more likely to number in the hundreds.

Further, it is highly doubtful that there were eight thousand rifles to be had in all of Georgia, and no matter how many men there were, most would have been armed with a smoothbore fowler, the equivalent of a single shot, 12 or 10 gauge shotgun. Rifles were carried by militia members, but their military efficiency left a lot to be desired since they took longer to load and usually could not mount a bayonet. The figure for accuracy of the shooters, however, does get pretty close. Properly loaded and patched, a rifled ball could be deadly accurate out to around 150 yards. (Until about the second or third shot, when fouling starts playing havoc with accuracy. 300 yards is right out.) On the other hand, no matter how well a ball-loaded smoothbore was prepared, its accuracy beyond 50 yards or so necessitated that they be fired in volley to provide an adequate volume of lead on the target. In any instance, marksmanship was highly prized among anyone who carried an arm, whether smoothbore or rifled. Missed shots meant missed dinner.

One thing that is certain--every man young Baikia saw had a weapon, regardless of the actual, literal number or their type. And they didn't get those guns, or their powder, or their shot from the British colonial governor James Wright or from Royal storehouses. (The Carolinas and Georgia had a tiny British contingent at the onset of fighting.) These men carried what they owned, and their sons along with them. Despite attempts to rewrite history--everday contemporary accounts, even those which might be written with literary license--indicate that individual ownership of arms was common and accepted.

What we can be relatively certain of is that Baikia saw more armed, rebellious Americans than he had ever seen before.

Knowing them as he did, he was one frightened young man.
posted by Terry at 4:08:00 PM