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    The Names of the Fallen

    Death came often for the soldiers of the 8th Virginia. Some died in battle, but most often it came in the form of diseases that were still poorly understood and for which there were no cures. Malaria was the number-one killer. All told, 121 8th Virginia soldiers are known to have died while in service--a number almost equal to two entire companies. The real number is higher than that. 
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    The cemetery in Sunbury, Georgia. The 8th Virginia was overwhelmed by malaria in the summer of 1776 and a great many of them died here. There are no markers or monuments for them. (Author)

    There is no roster of Capt. John Stephenson's company, so we have no way of knowing who most of those men were or what happened to them. Fifteen men were left behind in the Carolinas, too sick to return home. Another seventy were discharged early or dropped from the rolls, usually for unspecified reasons.  What percentage of these men died is unknowable, though we know the most senior of them was Maj. Peter Helphenstine. Three men were listed as missing. Thirty men were captured by the enemy, mostly at Germantown. Though some survived and some even escaped, we know that others died in miserable British prisons. At least one man died of smallpox, possibly induced by inoculation.

    The 8th Virginia saw hard service. It is hard to imagine that the mostly young men who first signed up in the winter of 1775-1776 had any idea what was really in store for them. All of the numbers above add up to about 240 men. Another 90 deserted--many of them when the still technically Provincial regiment was taken out of the province by Maj. Gen. Charles Lee in May of 1776. When the terms of the regiment's original two-year men neared their ends as the snow melted at Valley Forge there were only about fifty of them left. Heroes to be sure. Like all war survivors, though, they would no doubt have ascribed greater heroism to their fallen comrades.

    Listed below are the names of the 121 men known to have died while in service.
    Casualty Statistics
    Because new enlistees came on board at various times during the regiment's existence, calculating precise casualty statistics is complicated. Nearly all (but not all) of the events connected with data below occurred during the 2-year original enlistment period. There are no records for Capt. John Stephenson's one-year company. Captain Knox's company was not fully recruited. Percentages are based on nine theoretically full companies and assume all men are original enlistees. Percentages should therefore be taken as estimates and may be refined in the future.

    1% wounded/discharged (6)
    5% captured (35)
    14% deserted (85)
    20% died (120)
    21.5% sick/discharged early (132)
    48% casualty rate (no desertions)
    62% total attrition rate

    Capt. Thomas Berry's Company:
     
    1st Lieut. John Jolliffe, April 6, 1777
    Ens. William Mead, Nov. 20, 1776
    Sgt. Reese Bowen, Sept. 6, 1776
    Pvt. William Buckley, Sept. 16, 1776
    Pvt. Hugh Burns, Oct. 21, 1776
    Pvt. Jesse Chamblin, Oct. 31, 1776
    Pvt. Peter Fletcher, Nov. 10, 1776
    Pvt. Thomas Hankins, Nov. 29, 1776
    Pvt. Joseph Hickman, May 18, 1777
    Pvt. Luke Hines, Nov. 10, 1776
    Pvt. Dennis Kingore, Sept. 8, 1776
    Pvt. Neil McDade, Nov. 25, 1776
    Pvt. Thomas McVay, Oct. 1, 1776
    Pvt. Louis Routt, Nov. 10, 1776
    Pvt. Garett Trotter, Oct. 19, 1776
    Pvt. Peter Vandevourt, Dec. 31, 1776
     
    Capt. Richard Campbell's Company:
     
    Lt. Col. Richard Campbell, Sept. 8, 1781 (Eutaw Springs)
    Sgt. John Bowman, Aug. 19, 1779
    Pvt. William Davis, Sept. or Oct., 1777 (Brandywine or Germantown)
    Pvt. Frederick Long, Sept. or Oct., 1777 (Brandywine or Germantown)
     
    Capt. Jonathan Clark's Company
     
    Sgt. Maj. John Hoy, Dec. 3, 1776
    Sgt. George Parrott, Nov. 6, 1776
    Sgt. Humphrey Price, Nov. 24, 1776
    Cpl. William Brown, March 30, 1777
    Cpl. Mathew Toomey, Dec. 20, 1776
    Pvt. Nicholas Bowder, June 13, 1776
    Pvt. Nathan Brittain, Oct 17, 1776
    Pvt. Thomas Brittain, Sept. 29, 1776
    Pvt. Isaac Dent, Nov. 3, 1776
    Pvt. Mathias Funk, Dec. 20, 1776
    Pvt. Martin Honey, Sept. 20, 1776
    Pvt. John Maxwell, Dec. 25, 1776
    Pvt. Henry Moore, Sept. or Oct., 1777 (Brandywine or Germantown)
    Pvt. Isaac Pemberton, Jan. 12, 1778
    Pvt. Meredith Price, Jan. 3, 1777
    Pvt. Simon Siron, unknown date (left in Georgia)
    Pvt. Michael Wall, unknown date (before June 13, 1777)
    Pt. Walter Warner, Oct. 4, 1776
     
    Capt. William Croghan's Company
     
    Sgt. John McDoran, Jan. 30, 1777
    Cpl. Michael Kelly, Sept. 11, 1777 (Brandywine)
    Cpl. William Penny, before May 18, 1777
    Cpl. James Tucker, Dec. 27, 1776
    Drummer Francis Prush, before May 18, 1777
    Fifer Gabriel Christy, before April 1777
    Pvt. John Brock, March 18 or 25, 1776
    Pvt. John Brown, before April 1777
    Pvt. William Cochran, before April 1777
    Pvt. Robert Cochran, Sept. 1776
    Pvt. Philip Cole, Jan. 30, 1777
    Pvt. John Donnally, April 14, 1777
    Pvt. Nicholas Doran, April 13, 1777
    Pvt. William Gaddis March 15, 1777
    Pvt. Patrick Garry, Nov. 11, 1776
    Pvt. Joseph Gonsley, Feb. 1777
    Pvt. William Goodman, before April 1777
    Pvt. James Gorwin, Feb. 8, 1777
    Pvt. Patrick Hall, ca. Jan. 1, 1777
    Pvt. David Hanson, before April 1777
    Pvt. Lewis Henry, Nov. 1776
    Pvt. John Hinds, Aug. 14, 1776
    Pvt. Nathaniel Hosier, before April 1777
    Pvt. John James, ca. March 1, 1777
    Pvt. Jesse Job, before April 1777
    Pvt. Able Levesque, March 17, 1777
    Pvt. George Martin, Feb. 1777
    Pvt. Michael Martin, Feb. 1777
    Pvt. Moses Martin, Feb. 1777
    Pvt. Thomas Owens, Sept. 11, 1777 (Brandywine)
    Pvt. Thomas Ryan, before May 18, 1777
    Pvt. Henry Saltsman, Oct. 4, 1777 (Germantown)
    Pvt. James Smyth, Oct. 19, 1776
    Pvt. John Tuck, before April 1777
    Pvt. Daniel Viers, March 3, 1777
     
    Capt. William Darke's Company
     
    Pvt. Daniel Cameron, Jan. 15, 1777
    Pvt. WilliamEngle, ca. March 1776
    Pvt. Jonathan Herrin, Dec. 1776
    Pvt. Jeremiah Humphreys, Oct. 27, 1776
    Pvt. George Ketcher, Oct. 24, 1776
    Pvt. William Pingle, Dec. 1, 1776
    Pvt. John Polson, Oct. 26, 1776
    Pvt. George Pritty, Dec. 1, 1776
    Pvt. George Smith, Oct. 11, 1776
    Pvt. Samuel Watson, Dec. 8, 1776
     
    Captain Robert Higgins' Company

    Pvt. Zachariah DeLong, Feb. 1778 (POW)

    Capt. James Knox's Company
     
    Pvt. James Carr, Nov. 20, 1776
    Pvt. Charles Carter, Dec. 24, 1776
    Pvt. John Vance, Sept. 16, 1776
    Pvt. Henry Wallis, Dec. 1776
    Pvt. John Wilson, Nov. 8, 1776
     
    Capt. George Slaughter's Company
     
    Lt. Philip Huffman, March 15, 1781 (Guilford Courthouse)
    Sgt. James Newman, in Georgia, 1776
    Cpl. Barnett McGinnis, Nov. 25, 1776
    Cpl. Cornelius Mershon, Aug 4, 1776
    Fifer Henry Clatterbuck, July or Aug. 1776
    Pvt. Thomas Abbett, before Feb. 3, 1777
    Pvt. William Abbett, before Feb. 3, 1777
    Pvt. Edward Abbott, Oct. 19, 1776
    Pvt. John Abbott, Oct. 29, 1776
    Pvt. William Cabbage, Nov. 24, 1776
    Pvt. William Corbin, Dec. 10, 1776
    Pvt. Abraham Field, Aug. 6, 1776
    Pvt. Bozel Freeman, Nov. 15, 1776
    Pvt. Reuben Hollaway, Aug. 3, 1776
    Pvt. Utey Jackson, Aug. 20, 1776
    Pvt. John Jinkins, Jan. 13 or 15, 1777
    Pvt. Joseph Jones, May 6, 1777
    Pvt. Edward Kennedy, Dec. 3, 1776
    Pvt. Thomas Newman, in Georgia, 1776
     
    Captain David Stephenson

    No fatalities recorded.

    Captain John Stephenson

    No data available.

    Capt. Abel Westfall's Company
     
    Fifer Patrick Callihan, Sept. 25, 1776
    Pvt. Joseph Edwards, June 13, 1776
    Pvt. James Galloway, Jan. 1777
    Pvt. John Haggen, March 15, 1778
    Pvt. John Huff, Sept. 15, 1776
    Pvt. Moses Johns, May 20, 1778
    Pvt. William Kynets, Sept. 26, 1776
    Pvt. Hugh Lewis, Oct. 16, 1776
    Pvt. William McCormick, Dec. 28, 1776
    Pvt. Zachariah Pigman, Feb. 1778 (POW)
    Pvt. Philip Sanders, March 9, 1777

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    A Revolutionary War Dream Team

    Book Reviews
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    The 10 Key Campaigns of the American Revolution
    Edward G. Lengel, ed. (Washington, D.C: Regnery, 2020)
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    Edward Lengel begins this book with a remarkable claim. He writes, “The American War for Independence remains—now, nearly 250 years since its onset—a relatively new field of study.” This will initially strike many readers as a wild assertion. How can this be true when, by one estimate, nine hundred books have been written about George Washington alone? Lengel explains, simply, that “Shocking as it may seem, many of the war’s campaigns and battles have become the subjects of book-length treatments only over the past several years.”

    This is indisputably true. In important ways, recent books have also corrected and clarified our understanding of even the most famous campaigns, events, and personalities. It seems that historians were, for a long time, more interested in critiquing and analyzing the Founding Era than in nailing down the Revolution’s actual course of its events. 
    Several histories have appeared in this century that have broken significant new ground in this regard. In The 10 Key Campaigns of the American Revolution, Lengel pulls together a Dream Team of these writers to provide a fresh, top-level overview of the war. Each of the ten authors takes a chapter, providing an authoritative and readable account of a campaign.

    ​    For those already steeped in the subject matter, the book offers an opportunity to step back from the trees and look again at the forest. For those who are new to the military history of the founding era, it is an excellent primer. Best of all, it is a book filled with good stories. Who doesn’t love the drama of the Ten Crucial Days and King’s Mountain? Admittedly, there is something odd about writers who know so much about their subjects writing so briefly on them. How on Earth, one must ask, did Michael Harris manage to tell the story of Brandywine and Germantown in a mere eighteen pages? Yet, each of them does it quite well: providing very readable narratives that feature new or recent insights and well-colored characters. Some of the contributors ask and answer difficult questions. Washington and Lafayette, two of the war’s great heroes, are brought down a peg. History has been kinder to Benedict Arnold for some time. Now Charles Lee and Philip Schuyler are also given more sympathetic treatments.

    Continue to ...The Journal of the American Revolution

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    The Need for Freedom

    Frontier Race Religion
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    Patrick Henry was a proponent of religious freedom in Virginia, but also proposed state support for churches.

    The soldiers of the 8th Virginia regiment included Anglicans, Methodists, Lutherans, Reformed, Presbyterians, Baptists. Lieutenant Isaac Israel was probably Jewish. They helped turn Virginia from a religiously intolerant colony with an official, established church into a state that was at the vanguard of establishing religious freedom in America.
     
    The Church of England was deeply integrated into the government and society of colonial Virginia. Property owners paid taxes to support it, and it performed important functions like recording vital statistics and caring for orphans. Non-Anglicans had to pay for marriage licenses, but county clerks were under no obligation to record their marriages.  Dissenting churches were not welcome and their clergy were sometimes imprisoned or physically assaulted. 
    The Old Dominion’s most influential colonial governor, William Berkeley (1642-1652 and 1660-1677) was “bitterly hostile” to religious nonconformists, especially Puritans and Quakers. A law was enacted under his leadership to “preserve the Established Church’s Unity and purity of doctrine” by punishing any dissenting minister who attempted to preach in Virginia. During the reign of William and Mary, the Toleration Act of 1688 allowed non-Catholic ministers to preach under certain conditions, a change that applied to Virginia. When the Revolution broke out nearly a century later, however, religious dissenters in the colony still hadn’t gained much beyond being tolerated. ​
    On the western side of the Blue Ridge Mountains, however, things were different. Unlike the tidewater and piedmont areas of Virginia, the Shenandoah Valley was largely settled by German and Anglo- or Scotch-Irish immigrants who came inland on the Great Wagon Road from Pennsylvania. This brought Presbyterian, Lutheran, German Reformed, Quaker, Baptist, and Mennonite congregations into the colony. Collectively they made a regional majority, but their members still had to tithe to the English church, couldn’t hold public office, and had to build their churches in the countryside or on the edge of town.

    The government in Williamsburg allowed these dissenters to settle the Shenandoah Valley because they wanted to create a buffer between the older areas of Virginia and the dangers that existed in the wilderness: the Indians and the French. By the time the Revolution began, the valley was well-settled but culturally distinct from the areas east of the Blue Ridge.
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    Sir William Berkeley, Governor of Virginia (1642-1652, 1660-1677).

    The selection of Peter Muhlenberg as colonel of the 8th Virginia was clearly an effort to gain the support of the valley’s Germans for the cause. So too was the selection of Abraham Bowman for lieutenant colonel: he was the grandson of Jost Hite, who had led one of the first groups of German settlers to Virginia from Pennsylvania. Major Peter Helphenstine, the oldest but most junior of the three field officers, had immigrated to the valley from Germany as an adult. As residents of Woodstock, Strasburg, and Winchester, respectively, the three men also covered the geography of the heavily German lower (northern) Shenandoah Valley. Settlers in the upper (southern) Shenandoah Valley; the New and Holston river valleys of southwest Virginia; and the region around Fort Pitt in what is now southwestern Pennsylvania were also recruited for the regiment. Scotch-Irish Presbyterians predominated in these areas and were, at least by reputation, already willing to fight.
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    Patrick Henry's 1775 resolution. (Library of Congress)

    For the first time, Virginia’s coastal elite needed to proactively accommodate and attract the Old Dominion’s western settlers. These western Virginians were typically good marksmen and many of them were experienced warriors with fresh experience from Lord Dunmore’s 1774 war against the Shawnee. The creation of a “German” regiment (which was probably about half Scotch-Irish) was only one way that the revolutionary Virginia Convention accommodated and wooed the colony’s religious minorities.
    On August 16, 1775, several months before the 8th Virginia was authorized, the Third Virginia Convention adopted a resolution offered by Patrick Henry to grant the Baptists’ request to have their own military chaplains and excuse Baptist soldiers from attending Anglican services. The following summer, while the 8th was serving in the Carolinas, the Fifth Virginia Convention adopted the Virginia Declaration of Rights. This precursor to both the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights proclaimed that “all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity toward each other.”
    It would take some time for Virginia’s actions and practices to match the Convention’s words. That fall, ten thousand Virginians signed a petition circulated by the Baptists requesting religious equality and the disestablishment of the Anglican Church in Virginia. The document was 125 pages long, sewn together, and joined with wax seals.
     
    Virginia was not alone in the colonial period in practicing religious (or religiously-based) discrimination. Massachusetts in the 1600s was a virtual theocracy. Four people on three occasions were hanged to death for being Quakers. Many others were flogged and expelled from the colony. Conversely, in Pennsylvania (which had no established church), the Quaker Party—a political faction—clung to power until the Revolution by refusing to create new legislative districts in the colony’s growing western regions. ​

    North Carolina and Maryland were the first to disestablish the Church of England, both in 1776. However, Virginia suspended tithes for support of the church the same year and was at the forefront of articulating the importance of religious freedom during and after the Revolution. 
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    A signature page from the Ten Thousand Name Petition. (Library of Congress)

    The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was drafted in 1777 by Thomas Jefferson and enacted into law in 1786, formally disestablishing the Church of England (known thereafter as the Episcopal Church). Massachusetts was the last state to disestablish its state church, a predecessor of today’s United Church of Christ, in 1833.
    The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom
    [Drafted 1777, Enacted 1786]
     
    Whereas, Almighty God hath created the mind free;
     
    That all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and therefore are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being Lord, both of body and mind yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do,

    That the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time;
     
    That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions, which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical;
     
    That even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor, whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness, and is withdrawing from the Ministry those temporary rewards, which, proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labours for the instruction of mankind;
     
    That our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry,
     
    That therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence, by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages, to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right,
     
    That it tends only to corrupt the principles of that very Religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments those who will externally profess and conform to it;
     
    That though indeed, these are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way;
     
    That to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy which at once destroys all religious liberty because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of judgment and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own;
     
    That it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order;
     
    And finally, that Truth is great, and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them:
     
    Be it enacted by General Assembly that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities. And though we well know that this Assembly elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of Legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding Assemblies constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act irrevocable would be of no effect in law; yet we are free to declare, and do declare that the rights hereby asserted, are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right.

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    Mounting the Soldier Second

    Book Reviews Generals Religion
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    General Peter Muhlenberg: A Virginia Officer of the Continental Line
    by Michael Cecere (Yardley, Pa: Westholme, 2020)
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    “The General, mounted upon a white horse, tall and commanding in his figure, was very conspicuous at the head of his men…many of the [enemy] soldiers (German enlistments being for life,) remembered their former comrade, and the cry ran along their astonished ranks, ‘Heir kommt teufel Piet!’”
    ​
    This tale about Gen. Peter Muhlenberg at Brandywine appears in the 1849 biography written by his great nephew (and congressman) Henry Augustus Muhlenberg. “Here comes Devil Pete!” was shouted by members of a German dragoon company to which the writer says Muhlenberg had belonged as a young man. The story is nonsense, and just one example of why Michael Cecere’s new biography of the general is desperately needed.

    Peter Muhlenberg was a Pennsylvania-born German who was the son of the patriarch of the Lutheran Church in America.
    He is best-known as the rector of a Shenandoah Valley (Anglican) parish and colonel of the 8th Virginia Regiment, which was raised on the frontier and initially intended to be a “German” regiment. The famous but poorly-documented farewell sermon he delivered in Woodstock, Virginia, in the spring of 1776 has been the subject of epic poetry and modern political debate. After a tour of the southern theater under Maj. Gen. Charles Lee, he was made a brigadier general. His brigade of Virginians was in Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene’s division at Brandywine and Germantown. He was at Monmouth and remained in the army to the end of the war. He played an important role in the Virginia campaign leading up to Yorktown.

    ​...continue to The Journal of the American Revolution.

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    Death by Mosquito

    Charleston & Sunbury Disease
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    For the soldiers and officers of the 8th Virginia Regiment, mosquitos were far more deadly than Redcoats and Hessians.

    Most people know that lead balls were less dangerous than diseases were during the Revolution. Smallpox gets the most attention, but there were all sorts of diseases that spread through the camps. The disease that took the most 8th Virginia lives was malaria. In their case, no other disease comes even close.

    In 2015,     South Carolina was beset by record numbers of mosquitos. Citizens called for state or even federal action to combat the bugs. Tony Melton of Florence, S.C., told a reporter that mosquitos were “eating me alive” when he tried to ride his tractor through his sweet potato field. “People are staying inside; that’s the bottom line.” 
    Mosquitos are nothing new to South Carolina. In 1774 a resident called them “devils in miniature.” In 1776, Col. Peter Muhlenberg's soldiers had to contend with them and didn't have the option of going indoors. In May of that year, the regiment rushed south from Virginia to help defend Charleston. They were part of a small army led by the strict and sardonic Maj. Gen. Charles Lee. On their arrival, Capt. Jonathan Clark spent much of the first week staying at the home of Christopher Gadsden. Gadsden was a prominent South Carolina Patriot and an early champion of Independence. Clark initially camped in Gadsden’s garden, but recorded that upon the “arr[ival] of [the] Moschetto” he got up and moved “in the House.” Enlisted men didn't have the option.
    The Battle of Sullivan’s Island on June 28 was a major early victory for the Americans, and the successful defense by South Carolina provincial troops of the Island’s half-finished fort was regarded as a virtual miracle. About three companies of the 8th Virginia men (Continental troops) were posted at the opposite end of the island, helping to block a cross-channel infantry attack. Major General Lee praised his Continentals after the battle. “I know not which Corps I have the greatest reason to be pleased with Muhlenberg’s Virginians, or the North Carolina troops—they are both equally alert, zealous, and spirited.”
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    This stately 19th century Charleston house sits on the site of Christopher Gadsden's 1770s home. Attempting to sleep outdoors in this courtyard, Capt. Jonathan Clark couldn't take the "moschettos" anymore and moved inside. (Author)

    Though they fended off the British, many of them lost their battle with the mosquitos. Unlike the mosquitos bothering Tony Melton in 2015, the mosquitos of 1776 were active malaria vectors. By the start of August, nearly one hundred and fifty 8th Virginia men were too sick to continue south with General Lee into Georgia for a planned attack on West Florida. Most of the men who did continue were soon also sick. The army stopped its march in Sunbury, Georgia. South Carolina's Col. William Moultrie recorded that several men were buried there each day. The mosquitos paid no attention to rank. Colonel Muhlenberg got it and would never fully recover. Major Peter Helphinstine got it and was so sick he was forced to resign his commission and died a slow death at home in Virginia. The regiment was ordered back to Virginia in the fall, significantly depleted.
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    Gen. Charles Lee halted his planned invasion of Florida at Sunbury, Georgia. According to Charleston's William Moultrie, “14 or 15 [soldiers] were buried every day” in Sunbury as they succumbed to malaria. Sunbury is little more than a ghost town today. This old cemetery may be where they were buried. (Author)

    As measured by death and illness, malaria was the 8th Virginia's number one enemy in the war--and nobody knew what caused it. Longtime coastal South Carolina and Georgia residents usually had a developed resistance to it. Colonel Muhlenberg's men from the mountains and valleys of western Virginia had no resistance at all. The only known treatment came from the cinchona, a Peruvian tree whose bark contains quinine. The bark was hard to get. Most people thought the disease was caused by bad air ("mal aria") hovering over swamps and other dank areas.  In reality, it was carried by the mosquitos that bred in such places. Several hundred men living close together in the outdoors in the summer created the perfect conditions for the disease to spread. Mosquitos don't live long and don't travel far. "Social distancing" would have helped, though perhaps at greater distances than are needed for today's coronavirus.  
    Malaria was endemic to South Carolina and neighboring states until the 1950s. Its eradication is something of a mystery but may be connected to the invention of air conditioning, which prompted people to spend more time inside during the summer. Still, it continues to kill millions every year in Africa and other developing parts of the world.

    (Based on an earlier post.)

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    Many Men Have Died in Darkness

    Artifacts & Memorials Disease Race Veterans
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    On January 13, 1777 future President John Adams went for a walk in Philadelphia. He was, at the time, a delegate to the Continental Congress. After returning to his lodgings he wrote:

    "I have spent an hour this morning in the Congregation of the dead. I took a walk into the 'Potter's Field,' a burying ground between the new stone prison and the hospital, and I never in my whole life was affected with so much melancholy. The graves of the soldiers, who have been buried, in this ground, from the hospital and bettering-house, during the course of last summer, fall and winter, dead of the small pox and camp diseases, are enough to make the heart of stone to melt away! The sexton told me that upwards of two thousand soldiers had been buried there, and by the appearance of the grave and trenches, it is most probable to me that he speaks within bounds. To what causes this plague is to be attributed, I don't know--disease had destroyed ten men for us where the sword of the enemy has killed one!" ​
    Philadelphia's recently defaced Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is not a memorial for George Washington (though it is located in Washington Square). It is a memorial for the two or maybe three thousand penniless soldiers who are buried there in mass graves. Each was fighting for freedom at a time when a better understanding of freedom and equality was only just dawning on humanity. The evident majority who died of smallpox suffered more than most modern people can comprehend. They died for the principle that "all men are created equal" (the Declaration of Independence, written in 1776) and so that we might have the right "peaceably to assemble" and to "petition the Government for redress of grievances" (the 1st Amendment, written in 1791).

    "Black lives matter" has essentially the same meaning as "all men are created equal." Both are true statements. The newer slogan, however, is also a Declaration that the "arc of history" has farther to bend until it achieves justice. That is also true. Ask any member of "Mother Emanuel" AME Church in Charleston or the families of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd.

    We have a better understanding of freedom and equality today than America's founding generation had. But you have to walk before you can run, and the men buried in Washington Square were among the very first common people on Earth to walk upright and proudly in defense of human and civil rights. Today, most of the world is still trying to catch up.

    ​We can't let up now, however. We have farther to go.

    Read More: "The Tragedy of Henry Laurens" (August 1, 2019)

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