Talk:Battle of Blackstock's Farm

Tarleton's casualty figures

Wikipedia demands citation of reliable sources. Tarleton's account of the battle is not only not reliable, it's a primary source; and Wikipedia privileges authoritative secondary sources.--John Foxe (talk) 20:21, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Patrick O'Kelley, in Nothing but Blood and Slaughter: The Revolutionary War in the Carolinas. Volume Two: 1780 (Blue House Tavern Press, 2004. ISBN: 1-59113-588-5), page 366, gives Tarleton's losses at Blackstock's as "52 killed and wounded". In the accompanying footnote on page 721, O'Kelley quotes alternative accounts of the British casualties by two contemporary American Patriots: Charles Jones, who wrote that they had 92 killed and "upwards of 100 wounded" and Lt. Col. Charles Myddleton (a participant in the battle), who wrote that they "left 92 dead and 100 wounded upon the field". In any war, claims about the enemy's casualties are a notoriously unreliable source of information. For example, in The Forgotten Victory: The Battle for New Jersey – 1780 (Reader’s Digest Press, New York, 1972. ISBN: 0-88349-003-X), Thomas Fleming gives on page 203 a set of alleged British casualty figures for Revolutionary War engagements up to that point that appeared in the Patriot-aligned newspaper, the New Jersey Journal on June 14, 1780. Fleming remarks on page 204, “These casualty figures were wildly inflated. But they were good propaganda”. Both sides in this conflict are known on occasion to have wilfully exaggerated enemy casualties and minimized their own. Tarleton may well have done so but so also may Jones and Myddleton. If you can prove beyond all reasonable doubt that Jones and Myddleton are definitely right and Tarleton is definitely wrong, please do so. The fact that O'Kelley gives Tarlton's version in the main text and the other ones in a footnote at the end of the book would imply that he gives Tarleton's figures more weight than the others. Another reasonably modern source, Mark M. Boatner, in Cassell's Biographical Dictionary of the American War of Independence 1763-1783 (Cassell, London, 1966. ISBN: 0 304 29296 6), states in his article for Blackstock's on page 80, "Tarleton lost about 50 killed and wounded out of 270 engaged" and he gives no conflicting figures; so he would appear to accept Tarleton's version. Another thing that Boatner says (pp. 187-189) is, "In land warfare of the 18th and 19th centuries the ratio of wounded to killed in battle was about three or four to one. Figures that vary appreciably from this ratio are to be considered suspect: they stem either from deliberate falsification or from incomplete reporting". Jones's and Myddleton's claims about Tarleton's losses at Blackstock's are certainly "suspect" according to the definition given by Boatner, who was a retired U.S. Army colonel: but this does not necessarily indicate that they are wrong because Boatner's strictures indicate the typical killed-to-wounded ratio of the period and there are always exceptions to any general rule. J. D. Lewis in The Battle of Blackstock’s at The American Revolution in South Carolina gives Tarleton’s casualties as 52 killed and wounded (and includes 50 captured among Sumter’s losses) in the official table of statistics at the beginning of the page but later mentions Benson J. Lossing’s assertion that Tarleton lost 90 killed and 100 wounded.
In other words, Tarleton's account of his own losses is not disbelieved by all modern historians.
My contention is not that Tarleton's figures for his own casualties are necessarily accurate (you will have noticed that I changed the infobox British casualties to "51-167 killed and wounded", reflecting both sides of the casualty dispute) but that they are a matter of historical record and deserve to be mentioned as such. John Buchanan, in The Road to Guilford Courthouse, hotly disputes the authenticity of Tarleton's version of his own casualty figures but he nevetheless gives them in the main text of his book for all to see rather than hiding them away in a footnote. The American Revolutionary War: The Battle of Blackstock’s Plantation, a widely consulted website, gives preference to Charles Myddleton’s figures by putting them in the statistical table at the beginning of the page but nevertheless gives Tarleton’s figures alongside Myddleton’s in the ‘Casualties’ section, so that the reader can make up his own mind who to believe. Why should Wikipedia be any different? Arbitrarily and unilateraly deciding that one historical source "lied" while another indisputably told the gospel truth, and suppressing historical information because one merely suspects that it might not be accurate is not the Wikipedia way of doing things. Indeed, it is exactly the sort of individual POV judgement that Wikipedia forbids. We need to give the facts and leave the judgements to the reader. Tarleton's report of his own casualties is a historical fact, whether it contains false data or not.
My suggestion is that we give Tarleton's figures in the main text of the article with the stipulation that many modern historians reject them in favor of the alternative figures. That way, we alert readers to the possible inauthenticity of Tarleton's figures without withholding information from them that appears in most accounts of the battle that I have come across. Something along the following lines, perhaps:
"Tarlton’s own account of his casualties stated that the 63rd Regiment had 3 officers and 30 enlisted men killed or wounded, while the British Legion had 2 officers and 15 enlisted men killed or wounded and a staff officer was also killed; for a total of 51 killed and wounded (cited to Tarleton's Campaigns). However, Tarleton's figures are widely disbelieved, and other contemporary accounts giving a British loss of 92 killed and 75-100 wounded are accepted by the majority of modern historians" (cited to Buchanan and Lumpkin). What do you think?--Flonto (talk) 20:52, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

You're right. I think I'm just being overly suspicious of a hot shot officer who falsely claimed to have won a victory at Blackstocks. Just because he lied about the outcome of the battle, doesn't mean his casualties figures are any less accurate than those of the Patriots, who hardly had the time to get an accurate count before they they took themselves off that night. So yes, add in a sentence with Tarleton's figures. I may tweak it for style; but you're right, those figures should be in the text. All the best,John Foxe (talk) 01:44, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

It is done - and feel free to tweak because I am not the most stylish of writers. Regards, Flonto (talk) 07:30, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

I should mention that Patrick O'Kelley's footnote on page 721 of the book listed in the 'References' section gives, in addition to the statements of Jones and Myddleton, the following: "Nehemiah Blackstock, who was a boy at the time, wrote that he had nine plots on the Blackstock property, "containing 81 dead British"". This looks to me like one of those typical legends that grow up around battlefields and I therefore did not think it worthy of inclusion in the article. However, if you or anyone else who reads this page has a different opinion, then by all means put it in. Regards, Flonto (talk) 11:56, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

The battlefield is undeveloped but belongs to the state of South Carolina, which at least keeps the grass cut. Maybe someday they'll take ground penetrating radar out there and look for those graves. They certainly must be somewhere in the area. It would have been difficult to carry bodies any appreciable distance.--John Foxe (talk) 22:44, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

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"epaulets and stripes."

" as usual aiming "at the epaulets and stripes." "

This seems unlikely, since stripes as badges of non-commissioned rank were not introduced into the British army until the start of the next century. JF42 (talk) 12:59, 23 November 2023 (UTC)