Saturday, July 15, 2017

"Perpetuall Warr"

The utter violence of the plan, its bloodthirstiness and mercilessness, expressed not only a pent-up passion for revenge...but something deeper, something obscure and elementally compelling...(emphasis added)

"Reciprocity:" So close to "revenge."
...
The colony was devastated. In a few hours, in the western and central areas of the colony, between 325 and 300 English men, women, and children were killed.
...
The scenes of individual struggles--frenzied, bloody, deadly hand-to-hand fights--would never be forgotten by those who survived them...
...
...The devastation of the massacre was not only physical it was psychological as well, and in the end political. The Indians, one planter said, had "burst the heart" of those who had survived. Wandering amid the charred ruins and unburied bodies, the wrecked equipment and broken barricades, was a reduced population in shock...they struggled to explain how the catastrophe could have happened.

Just like after 9/11.

And, just as after 9/11, the cycle of revenge turns. It's the Englishman's turn now. This is what Professor Bailyn meant in the introduction by "the loss of civility," how "All--felt themselves dragged down or threatened with descent into squalor and savagery":

Justice cries out for revenge, the company told the governor and council in Virginia, and wisdom demands security..."let them have a perpetuall Warr without peace or truce and...without mercie too."
...
Disorganized, shocked, and still fearful, but determined to...turn on the Indians in a punishing campaign of revenge...

By late spring, two months after the massacre, the war of revenge was well in motion...

No tactic, however ruthless, was ruled out.