TIL: George Washington Burned New York

Source: Wikipedia .

General George Washington ordered the burning of New York City in 1776 after his retreat from the city before the advancing British. Well, that's not exactly historically proven. The headline in The Atlantic article by Daniel Immerwahr is less definitive: "Did George Washington Burn New York?" There's a lot of circumstantial evidence saying he did and he wanted his involvement kept secret.

What Immerwahr does make clear is that total war is a tactic as old as, well, war itself. And the side telling the story always blames the other side for engaging in it, never themselves. And that includes George "I cannot tell a lie" Washington.

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Immerwahr lays out the evidence that Washington himself was probably responsible for the fire that "consumed between a sixth and a third of New York City, leaving a fifth of its residents homeless." He also reports how the colonists blamed the British for practicing total war.

The Declaration of Independence, after charging the King with arson, indicted him for unleashing “merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”

Source: The Atlantic.

Of course, the "Indian Savages" do it. The British do it. But not us. Not George Washington. But of course in fact we did, and not just in New York. Immerwahr goes on to cite examples of "total war" against Indigenous people, perhaps because they sided with the British, or perhaps just because the colonists didn't like how Indigenous people didn't like colonists stealing their land.

Every war has a nasty habit of devolving quickly into "total war". Sherman's March to the Sea is the best known example from the Civil War. The destruction of the hilltop town of Guernica, Spain, by German-made bombers in 1937 is the best known example of "total war" before WWII and the Blitz, the fire-bombings of Dresden and Tokyo, and the most destructive of all, the obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the dropping of a single atomic bomb on each city.

But we've learned, right? Modern countries don't do that any more, right? On the contrary, pulled right from this week's headlines is this news: "VP Kamala Harris: U.S. formally accuses Russia of crimes against humanity in Ukraine".

Total war: As new as today's headlines. As old as war itself. We all do it. Even George Washington.