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muck
05-28-05, 10:42 AM
Some Early American History.

Since Americans learn little American history in schools, it's here to learn on
the internet. (It's interesting how things change throughout history. My
mother was French-Canadian and Native-American, Mohawk. Yet, I was brought up
to love the United States.)

Memorial Day was set up to remember the sacrifices of the United States
military. The French and Indian War(s) ended about 20 years, before the
Declaration of Independence was signed. Personally, I think the men and women,
who built this memorial to a hero of the French and Indian Wars should have
picked a different day to dedicate it. Especially, since Maj. Robert Rogers
fought for the British against America's first military men and women.

Jack

The French and Indian War
http://home.earthlink.net/~sussex_nj_history/id3.html



******
Vets Criticize Timing of Statue's Unveiling
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050528/ap_on_re_us/memorial_day_fi\
ghter
By CHRIS CAROLA, Associated Press Writer Sat May 28, 6:58 AM ET

FORT EDWARD, N.Y. - Maj. Robert Rogers, the frontiersman whose 18th century
manual on guerrilla warfare has become a blueprint for Army Ranger fighting
tactics, is getting what some consider a long-overdue honor: a statue in his
memory. But some veterans believe unveiling the monument on Memorial Day is
insensitive because Rogers was loyal to England during the Revolutionary War.

"I think it's a travesty that we would think about honoring a person, especially
someone who fought against us, on that day," said Bob Bearor, who served in the
Army's 101st Airborne Division in the 1960s. "It's a sacred day. ... Let's honor
our dead who died for our country."

The life-size bronze statue is scheduled to be unveiled during a ceremony on
Rogers Island in the Hudson River, 40 miles north of Albany. The island served
as the base camp for Rogers' Rangers during the late 1750s, when the British and
French fought for control of North America.

The statue will stand near the site where Rogers penned "Rules of Discipline," a
common sense guideline for battling the French and their Indian allies in the
North American wilderness in 1757. Also known as Rogers' "Standing Orders," the
rules have been boiled down over the years from 28 to 19 and are still used to
train soldiers at the Army Ranger School at Fort Benning, Ga.

Rule No. 1 of Rogers' manual, popularized and paraphrased in the novel, "The
Northwest Passage," is, "Don't forget nothing." Another rule, No. 15, is "Don't
sleep beyond dawn. Dawn's when the French and Indians attack."

Although some veterans say they have no qualms with the Rogers statue, Bearor
and others say they are upset over a local developer's plans to unveil the
statue Monday, when the nation honors its war dead.

Bearor says Rogers, a New Hampshire-born frontiersman who led his Rogers'
Rangers on guerrilla raids for the British during the French and Indian War,
turned against his fellow Americans in the Revolutionary War.

But organizers of the May 30 event defend the timing, saying that holding it on
the holiday allows the greatest number of local dignitaries and the public to
attend.

The local newspaper, the Post-Star of Glens Falls, has editorialized against the
Memorial Day ceremony, but some veterans aren't so vexed. "I don't see any
problem," said Harold Murray, commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars post in
Glens Falls. "That's going quite a ways back in history."

Richard Fuller is caretaker of the private portion of Rogers Island where the
statue will stand. The property is owned by retired construction executive Frank
Nastasi of Syosset. Both men are veterans and neither believes that holding the
event on Memorial Day shows disrespect for America's war dead, Fuller said.

But the head of a group of former and active-duty Rangers argues the although
tribute may be well-intended, it is problematic.

"Memorial Day? They're not thinking that through," said retired Army Capt. Steve
Maguire, president of the U.S. Army Ranger Association. "It just seems like I
would try a different day."

Although he doesn't deny Rogers' military legacy, Bearor, a French and Indian
War re-enactor and author of several books on the conflict, questions holding a
Memorial Day tribute to a man who George Washington didn't trust.

Fearing Rogers was a British spy, Washington turned down his request to join the
Continental Army at the outset of the American Revolution. Rogers went on to
raise a company of loyalist rangers, but failed to have the impact he had in the
previous war. A heavy drinker, he died a pauper in England in 1795 and lies
buried somewhere beneath the streets of London.

"Even the English don't look at him as a hero," Bearor said. "They buried him in
an unmarked grave."

Controversy aside, a tribute to Rogers is long overdue, said Stephen Brumwell, a
British author whose latest book, "White Devil," details the most famous exploit
of Rogers' Rangers: the 1759 revenge raid on an Abenaki Indian village in
Quebec. The raid that inspired the 1826 novel "The Last of the Mohicans," by
James Fenimore Cooper.

"He earned his statue the hard way," Brumwell said in a telephone interview from
his home in the Netherlands. "While others were sitting out the French and
Indian War in Boston and New York, he was leading patrols into enemy territory,
often in the very depths of winter."

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050528/ap_on_re_us/memorial_day_fi\
ghter

HardJedi
05-28-05, 02:30 PM
well, I have no idea why we would ever, on ANY day give this man a statue it OURR country. if England wants to honor him, then fine.

while yes, at the time of his "heroics", England was our ruler, he sided against us in our bid for independence, therefore, no statue.

Joseph P Carey
05-28-05, 09:54 PM
The old saying is, "Every large building is built by little bricks, one on top of another."

If we take that saying, and we decide that this and that brick on the bottom of the structure are just not as important as the bricks that followed, we stand to lose everything. We could remove them, but the removal, one brick at a time, would eventually bring down the building.

The French and Indian War was just as important to this country as was the Revolutionary War. It, and everything about it, is just one of those small bricks that built this country into what it is today.

Let Maj Rogers have his fame and his memorial,
It does not hurt any one that is here and alive today!
He is the foundation from which we have sprung,
His politics were his own, that is the American way.

HardJedi
05-28-05, 10:10 PM
ahhh you are right. the french and indian war IS important to American history. if not for it, the british government would not have increased taxes so heavily on the colonists, nor stationed more and more troops here, thus negating two of the major reasons FOR the revolution.

Joseph P Carey
05-29-05, 12:06 AM
Originally posted by HardJedi
ahhh you are right. the french and indian war IS important to American history. if not for it, the british government would not have increased taxes so heavily on the colonists, nor stationed more and more troops here, thus negating two of the major reasons FOR the revolution.

You are correct HardJedi! Without men like Major Rogers, his political beleifs put aside, we would be a collections of Colonies in the service to the Crown to this day. West of the Missisppi would be French and would be Spanish, and the west of Canada would be Russian. We'd be another group of Third World Colonies dominated by the European Royalty. Freedom would never have gained its foothold, and the world would never have been the same.

God bless America and the freedoms we have today!

HardJedi
05-29-05, 08:16 AM
Joseph, I think you missed my point. I ws being both sarcastic, and telling the truth.

I still say, no statue for people who basically had nothing to DO with THIS country.

The man did not fight for THIS country. HE fought for the british empire.

when THIS country was forming. he supported it's enemies.

Joseph P Carey
05-29-05, 02:37 PM
Originally posted by HardJedi
Joseph, I think you missed my point. I ws being both sarcastic, and telling the truth.

I still say, no statue for people who basically had nothing to DO with THIS country.

The man did not fight for THIS country. HE fought for the british empire.

when THIS country was forming. he supported it's enemies.

Hard Jedi,

I don't think I missed your point at all.

When he was young, and the sauce had not taken his prime away from him, he formed a group of backwoods Colonists to his unit, and many of those men went on to fight for the New Republic in the years to come. He was twenty years older in the the fight for the Republic. He was decimated by good living, and hard drinking in the bosom of Mother England, and he was disturbed that Washington, a very smart man, had not chosen him to be a leader in the Continental Army. Remember, England was the government. His political views were for his country, not for what seemed and impossible dream of some rich and proserous esatate owners in the East. England was the power of the world.

What was it in Foust, "It is better to rule in Hell, than to serve in Heaven!"

He felt betrayed, and his head swam in rotten whiskey. He was not a Ranger any longer, and the men he lead were now the enemies of his country, England. In truth, he may have done more for this country being against us, than he would have been being with us. To defeat the famous Major Rogers was more a confidence builder for the American troops, than to have him being defeated by the Brits.

He does deserves his statue for the French and Indian War! He is our History, much like Benedict Arnold, another true American Hero, without which we would not have defeated the Brits.

Arnold, he too went back to the Mother Country, but, without him, Saratoga would never have been a victory over the Brits, it would have been just another of a long list of defeats at the hands of Mother England.

Even traitors have their meaning in a country built on differences and compromises. John Kerry was a traitor, and still the people of Massachusetts, and the USA, vote for him, much to my consternation. I wish he were man enough, and he would go back to his mother country, North Vietnam, and die there like both Rogers and Arnold had done in England.

Phantom Blooper
05-29-05, 03:54 PM
Pigeons need somewhere to Sh*t ! Semper-Fi! "Never Forget" Chuck Hall

HardJedi
05-30-05, 07:40 AM
LMOA! that's true, Phantom. might as well be on that guy, eh? ;)

Phantom Blooper
05-30-05, 08:21 AM
My comment was being sarcastic and smart a$$ed. I feel that way though.

Here in the U.S. it takes an act of congress and giving the birth rights of your first born for one of our own to be honored and reconized.statue,stamp,wall,garden ect. Then form a committee and pay extra security to keep the protesters at bay,get permits,and raise your own funds. Then those funds are to be matched until the next budget and your plan is at a standstill and by the wayside.We are a free and open country, as of now. I am very familiar in trying to have something passed for our own countrymen and heroes.It's very hard,and we just let another land come over and do as they please with fear of uprisal.

The history of this country is grand.I have not a problem with this man being honored,in England or a historical museum here. Every soldier has his moment of fame.I have no problem with an EID stamp in a Muslim country,but not for me to send cards out during the holidays. Put a statue of Chesty or Patton in Korea or Germany and see how long it lasts. Congress and G.W. will apologize profusely or G.W. may tell them to kiss his a$$. I hope so because they can at any time kiss mine. Let the pigeons of peace free to fly and land.

Semper-Fi! "Never Forget" Chuck Hall

USMC-FO
05-30-05, 08:48 AM
It never ceases to amaze me about the things we all carp and snipe about....

I suppose if some wealthy land owner wants to put a statute to this guy on his land that is his business. His timeing however for its unveiling is poor.... So how is that any different than lots of other things done to capitalize on a significant date or place ? Happens all the time, sadly.

Frankly I am not impressed with this guy or his exploits...British don't seem to care as he is plunked down undersome street it appears. And I am sure in Abenaki lore he is a murdering terrorist.