Judging History (branch off from election thread)

[Noncommunist]

Not really, this where American bias comes in that I have talked about. Strictly by the facts, he was a traitor to the British crown, end of story. Not passing judgement on that point, but to argue that "winners are revolutionaries" is prime example of how skewed our ideas of history are when we can't even accept simple facts because certain words have negative connotation.

If the crown wasn't fulfilling its duties to its subjects, then it seems that the term traitor seems overly negative.

You're reading forward and making the mistake of believing that the Army that fought Napoleon was the same one that fought Washington, it wasn't. Nor was the British Navy at this time the one Nelson would command decades later. America's French allies gave the Royal Navy a drubbing and Washington's Army were regular soldiers just like the British, and just like the British they were a mix of veterans of the Indian wars and newly raised recruits.

Given that the French lost a ton of good admirals and captains during the French Revolution, the British Navy of 1777 was probably about the same as the British Navy of 1805. It's just that their enemies decreased in skill due to internal issues.