Happy 4th of July!

Firstly - Happy 4th of July! America will officially celebrate it's 250 birthday next year, but in the spirit of rebellion and the official start of celebrations, wishing America a happy 249 birthday. The experiment continues.

Multi-post here since readers will soon see a change in the Author's Notes section of my novels and within this site.

Technically I didn't post for Battle of of Monmouth last week since that happens in 1778 and it's about 3 years away from the official #America250. But I'd be remiss in not posting about the Battle of Bunker Hill/Battle of Breed's Hill. It's not going to be a regular post about Bunker Hill since it'll be more of a review of one of the more...liberal interpretations of the Sons of Liberty in Boston and some of the Founding Fathers and Mothers.

drum roll...

History channel's "Sons of Liberty" miniseries event that premiered in 2015. Yes. That god-awful one. Where they tried to make the Founding Fathers younger and hipper in an effort to appeal to the audience ("TURN: Washington's Spies" did a better job).

Anyways...I digress. This series only redeeming quality is it's catchy title soundtrack which was composed by Hans Zimmer protege/graduate of his music work - Lorne Balfe. And even then, it liberally takes themes from a previous Lorne Balfe work set in the same time period - "Assassin's Creed III" video game.

The "Sons of Liberty" provides an interesting backdrop to the 5-hour "epic" event as it is billed. It follows Samuel Adams (named Sam Adams in the marketing effort to tie it to the brewery) - a sort of contrast to the more serious and way better "John Adams" miniseries by HBO back in 2009. Sam is cast as a young father where he was actually around middle age during this time period of the Boston Massacre through the Siege of Boston. Ben Barnes plays him with the aplomb of his usual fare of swashbuckling hero-style with some parkour thrown in there. (Honestly, did someone just play the AC3 game and stole from everything?)

All other characters in there (Hancock, Revere, Warren, Washington and Franklin) are caricatures of whom they really were - though they manage to make Hancock even more foppish than he was in real life. Costuming is very pretty, but lacks the typical fare and has all wander around (except for Hancock while in Boston) dark trenches and grungy outfits. Both Adams cousins and Warren definitely wore much more tailored fare per their status as middle/upper-class lawyers and practicing doctors.

There's a lot more I can go on about this, but let's just say watching this for 5 hours was a bit painful for me. I watched in stints. Stopped about 15 minutes in because of some groan-inducing thing that happened and then came back to it later in the day. By the time the Battle of Bunker Hill rolled around, I was ready to watch majority of these characters die even though only Joseph Warren gets the epic treatment.

My final thoughts? Watch at your own discretion, but be ready to just shake your head the whole time as shenanigans happen and things get liberally interpreted. The actual Sons of Liberty for the Boston chapter would be rolling in their graves for what was shot and filmed. I hoped all actors got paid big bucks just to star in this.

Side note: if you are a fan of "Band of Brothers" like I am - you should watch it just to see Shane Taylor in a rare silver screen medium. He plays Thomas Preston and it's wholly different than his "Doc" Roe character from "Band of Brothers".

Celebrating 250: The Battle of Fort Ticonderoga (Sheldon & Blackden 1st Meeting)

A smidge late to the party, but the Battle of Fort Ticonderoga was "fought" on May 10th, 1775 and its victory enabled the Siege of Boston to happen. "Fought" in quotations because it was a route with no shots fired and an unconditional surrender by British forces to American Continentals. Ticonderoga's cannons were stripped and sent through an overland route to the bluffs overlooking Charlestown and Boston, forcing the British to surrender in early 1776.

The expedition was led by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold but among its officers was also future members of the 2nd Light. Namely Elisha Sheldon and Samuel Blackden under David Wooster's command. Following the Battle of Lexington and Concord, a call to arms was taken up by various militia and the Cause was a rallying cry to encircle the British defenses at Boston. Most of the militia went to Boston, but some went up to Ticonderoga knowing that they needed cannons to force the British to surrender or to drive them out of the city themselves. The British had their warships with cannons able to be fired up to Continental defenses, the Continentals could not fire back.

After this, Sheldon was placed in command of the Light Horse regiment from Connecticut, serving in Boston and then down to New York City and part of the Battle of White Plains. Blackden's command was unknown, but the two would eventually meet and serve again with one another when the 2nd Light was raised.

Based on the cordial nature of Sheldon and Blackden's letters to each other and to others referencing the other; along with the fact that both came from Connecticut, we can infer that both were friendly with one another enough to serve in the same regiment at the re-organization of the military in early 1777 (the formation of the 2nd Continental Light Dragoons). However, both also had their pride and judging by the nature of Blackden's lack of resignation, but refusal to actually do his duties as 2IC after the disastrous letter sent to Sheldon by a majority commissioned officers in late 1778, the friendship was broken.

One cannot truly know why, but perhaps Blackden compared a lot of Sheldon's indifference and indecisiveness in his response/lack of response to the letter to the early campaigns - where merit and glory in the battlefield mattered a lot to gentleman officers. Maybe there was something Blackden saw in Sheldon that he compared to Arnold from Ticonderoga campaign. Maybe it was something else. Whatever it was - Sheldon and Blackden knew each other from 1775 and to see such a friendship broken by mid-war is truly disappointing.