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Patriots
Given that the British army during the American Revolution wore red military jackets, the British forces were nicknamed the “Redcoats.” The Redcoats had more resources and training than their American counterparts, but different branches of the army often failed to communicate with one another. Ultimately, the Redcoats were not able to withstand the Patriots’ tenacity, especially not once the French government officially backed the rebels. The most important Redcoat generals were William Howe, Henry Clinton, and Lord Cornwallis.
Redcoats Quotes in Lafayette in the Somewhat United States
The Lafayette in the Somewhat United States quotes below are all either spoken by Redcoats or refer to Redcoats. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Pages 60-125
Quotes
The place looks wrong. I’m not bothered that the present intrudes on the past, what would the combination Pizza Hut-Taco Bell looming near a road once crammed with redcoats; or that Fuzzy Butts Dog Daycare is situated a stone’s throw from the old Quaker house where Lafayette reportedly spent the night before the battle. No, my problem is springtime. The Brandywine countryside is in bloom—too green, too chirpy, too full of life.
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Pages 126-190
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When Lafayette wrote his letter to Washington worrying that America could lose the war not at the hands of the redcoats but rather “by herself and her own sons,” he might not have been referring solely to the Conway cabal. He may have also had in mind the observable fact that the military, congressional, and state bureaucracies responsible for supplying the common soldiers with luxuries like food, water, and shoes word, to use an acronym coined by the grunts of Ike’s war, FUBAR.
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Anyone who accepts the patriot’s premise that all men are created equal must come to terms with the fact that the most obvious threat to equality in eighteenth-century North America was not taxation without representation but slavery. Parliament would abolish slavery in the British Empire in 1833, thirty years before President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. A return to the British fold in 1778 might have freed American slaves three decades sooner, which is what, an entire generation and a half? Was independence for some of us more valuable than freedom for all of us? As the former slave Frederick Douglass put it in an Independence Day speech in 1852, “This is your 4th of July, not mine.”
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Pages 190-268
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The Americans, who had been British for centuries and not British for only three years, were quick to turn on the French after Newport—too quick. Most of that ire can be explained by the current events in Rhode Island, but some of the patriot disdain was older, in their blood.
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For that reason, some scholars consider this somewhat forgotten maritime dust up—referred to as the Battle of the Chesapeake […]—to be the most important altercation of the American Revolution, a take that’s all the more astonishing considering not a single American took part in it. Nor did a single American even witness it.
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Redcoats Term Timeline in Lafayette in the Somewhat United States
The timeline below shows where the term Redcoats appears in Lafayette in the Somewhat United States. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Pages 1-59
...Even as the French began to stockpile weapons, however, the British were faster. Thousands of Redcoats came over in ships and attacked the Patriots at a series of battles across New...
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Pages 60-125
...General Henry Clinton (the man who would later be put in charge of the whole Redcoat operation). But on his way back from England, rather than returning to his wife’s home,...
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...the weapons thousands of miles—overnight—up to Boston, allowing the Americans to fend off the encroaching Redcoats. The idea that such a man as Knox could be replaced by a French stranger...
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...Americans. The Patriots lost here, largely because the lush hills around Brandywine allowed the British Redcoats to conceal their identities—and launch a sneak attack.
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Pages 126-190
...shield Franklin from the news that the Patriots were about to lose Philadelphia to the Redcoats. Though the city was not very important strategically to the Americans, it acted as a...
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...a corner by Lee’s retreat, Washington had no choice but to stand and fight Clinton’s Redcoats. Once again, Washington’s “coolness and firmness” rallied the Patriot troops, inspiring great admiration in men...
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Pages 190-268
...be a British spy when he was caught smuggling information about Washington’s plans to the Redcoats. A panicked Washington wrote to Ben Franklin in France to persuade Franklin to ask for...
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...to surround the British on all sides. Washington put Lafayette in charge of encircling the Redcoats in Virginia, while other officers set up decoy tents near New York City to confuse...
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...with the help of men like Lafayette, Steuben and Alexander Hamilton, the Americans cut the Redcoats on Yorktown off from food to such an extent that they resorted to killing and...
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On October 6, 1781, the Patriots snuck up on the Redcoats and dug their final line of trenches. Three days later, the Americans began pelting the...
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...redoubts, the well-made earthen forts that served as the final line of defense for the Redcoat camp at Yorktown. Under Alexander Hamilton’s command, 400 Americans attacked one of the redoubts. As...
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...out, leaving Cornwallis with no option besides surrender. Through cannon fire, the Americans recognized a Redcoat drummer approaching their camp with a white flag—and at this sign of surrender, the Americans...
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...“honors of war,” but Lafayette remembered the humiliation Americans had suffered at Charleston, when the Redcoats had denied them these very same honors. He therefore pushed for the Patriots to make...
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