British Troops Quotes
There is disagreement amongst historians as to whether or not the atrocities attributed to the retreating British troops were actually true. There are two other possibilities. First, this report was made only a week after the battle itself and less than that since the alleged atrocities would take place as the British retreated. There were certainly all kinds of rumors with information passed from person to person with no modern means of documentation. The Provisional Congress may have sincerely thought that all the events occurred but they may have been the result of inadvertent exaggeration. Then there is the possibility that in order to fire up the Americans to join the war, some or all of the atrocity reports were deliberately fabricated. It would only take two or three delegates to agree on such a strategy and they could “confirm” each other’s accounts of the happenings. Of course it might all be true. However, as the British retreated to Boston where they had reinforcements, they did not have a lot of time for malicious atrocities. All along the route, Minutemen, local farmers and townspeople continued the attack against the British. By the time the British soldiers reached Boston, 73 British solders were dead and 174 more were wounded. In war truth does not have the respect that it usually does. See {626632}.
A large county in Virginia is named after him, Loudoun Country.
A delegation from Sinn Fein, headed by Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins, had negotiated a treaty of Irish Independence except that it did not cover Northern Ireland where the majority of the people wanted to stay a part of Britain. For 700 years, the Irish had fought for independence, and finally they got it for the vast majority of Ireland and the overwhelming majority of the Catholics of Ireland. The alternative to agreeing to the treaty was to continue the war between the IRA and the British Troops. At the time, the IRA was just about totally beaten and probably could not hold out another month. De Valera, a very shrewd politician, as the leader of Sinn Fein (and the IRA) would normally have headed the Irish Delegation. But he chose not to because he realized that they would never get independence for all 32 counties of Ireland as the British would not leave the Northern Ireland Protestants to their fates against their will. The best Ireland could get was Independence for all of Catholic majority Ireland. And he knew that public opinion would oppose giving up even one county becuse that was what the leaders had told the people for years. So De Valera let his two associates take the popular blame after he denounced the treaty with his famous quotation {639690}. Shortly after that, Michael Collins, the brilliant military Commander of the IRA who signed the treaty was assassinated. To many, it was as if De Valera had pulled the trigger. The treaty was ratified by a 7 vote margin by the Dail as there was no army left to fight, and the angry Irish electorate voted for De Valera as Ireland’s first President. The politician had won; the patriot had died.
