Jeffery Amhurst Quotes
Remember the atrocities they have committed. Take your revenge, but it is my orders that no women or children be killed.
The Abenaki Indians from Canada had come South and raided many of the settlements of upstate New York. In the process, they committed many atrocities killing civilian men, women and children. Amhurst ordered Robert Rogers and his rangers to attack the Abenaki home villiage in Canada on a famous punitive raid. The Rangers, did indeed, raid the Abenaki and wiped out all the males of the tribe that were in the camp at the time. Amhurst hated Indians, but still had his standards regarding the killing of women and children, but was perfectly willing to kill all the mature males. There were no Geneva Conventions at the time. The same general introduced biological warfare by giving Indians smallpox infected blankets. See {619646}
Jeffery Amhurst, 1717-1797, British Commander-in-Chief of North America, Orders to Robert’s Rangers sending them on a Retaliatory Raid against the Abenaki Indians in Canada
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
While this is a classic quotation demonstrating the intentional use of germ warfare in early America, biochemical warfare had existed long before ranging from the poisoning of wells in Biblical times to the hurling of diseased animal and human body parts in and out of besieged cities with catapults.
Simon Bolivar and other freedom fighters in South America used this quotation to justify numerous acts of retaliation against the Spanish troops controlling their countries.
Roger’s Rangers of the French & Indian War were the first using unconventional warfare and invented the “deep raid” when they went in stealth all the way to Quebec and defeated the Abnaki Indians in their home village rather than defend against the Indians’ French coordinated attacks on upper York State. Rogers was portrayed by Spencer Tracy in the film Northwest Passage depicting the raid. All the men were killed but the women and children were captured and released with the exception of 5 teenagers who the Rangers took with them. This was one of the first formal “Rules of War” in what was otherwise a viciously uncivilized war.
The President had earlier threatened to execute Confederate prisoners, if the South implemented its threat to execute any Union Negro soldiers they captured. The threat seems to have worked. See Lincoln.
A number of the American soldiers refused to obey Calley's illegal order. Some helped some villagers to escape, and a helicopter pilot landed betreen Callery's men and the villagers they were shooting at, and ordered his helicopter machine gun crew to fire on the soldiers if they did back off. The soldiers stopped firing at the civillians. However, his and other reports of the massacre were covered up by the military for a few years. Mai Lai was not the only major war crime perpetrated by Americans in the Vietnam War; there had been a few others. But given the years of fighting and the many opportunities war crimes violations under orders were quite rare. The Viet Cong had many more war crimes that they perpetrated, and our South Vietnamese allies repeatedly committed war crimes against their own people.
These battles with the Irish—in this case the MacDonnell clan—were brutal atrocities where the winners of the battle killed all the losers and the women and children with them in the case of the Irish.
Over the years Sherman’s advocacy of Indian extermination went beyond the Sioux to all Indians.
