2006-06
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 5/31/2006
Newspaper, “The Norwich Packet and the Weekly Advertiser” 4p. folio, January 16, 1781, printed by John Trumbull, with front page article containing news that contradicts the published reports in British newspapers on the fighting in the South reported by a “gentleman of North Carolina” who begins “As the British newspapers have lately been filled with pompous accounts of the killed, wounded, and prisoners who were taken on the 16th of August; I shall try to furnish you with a different and perhaps a more correct account of the transactions of that memorable day....The British news-writers, and some of their officers, pretend that they buried 10 or 11 hundred of our men, who were killed in action. It would be more for the honour of humanity to suppose that the number did not exceed 100, because the amount of wounded prisoners, who were brought to Cambden from the actions of the 16th and 18th, did not exceed 240. But in all battles, where prisoners are not massacred, the wounded are three times as many as the number killed: hence, by their own account, the British troop must have been savages of the first magnitude; they must have destroyed 8 or 900 men, who lay wounded and incapable of resisting. One of our officers who viewed the field after the battle apprehends that we lost about 200; unfortunatly this moderate account supposes that above 100 were massacred. it is certain that Gen. Gregory and others of our officers who were last on the field saw the British soldiers stabbing our men with bayonets, who lay on the ground with broken limbs. The conduct of our militia has been indiscriminatly censured, because some of them were seized with a strange panic at the very begining of the battle, but it should also be remembered, that some of them fought with the coolness of veterans. General Gregory’s brigade of North Carolina militia fought while they had a single cartridge; when they complained their powder was all gone he desired them to use their bayonets....” and more war news. Fine. The Battle of Cowpens1, January 17, 1781, pittied a mixture of militia and Continental soldiers against a crack British regulars, starting a string of events that would end with the surrender at Yorktown.
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