The Patriot

The movie “The Patriot” is set in South Carolina, a colony often overlooked in the study of the American Revolution, and tells the story of Benjamin Martin (Mel Gibson) and his family from the beginning of the war to its end in Yorktown, Virginia, with the surrender of the English commander, Lord Cornwallis. Although the movie focuses on the Martin family and how its various members deal with the war (a plot line that could be easily shifted to any war at any time in history), several scenes allow us to ask questions specifically about the movie’s portrayal of America’s War for Independence.

Was the debating that occurred in the South Carolina assembly meeting representative of each colony? Yes. Going to war was not an easy choice to make. In considering war, those Americans who were of English descent were rebelling against their own countrymen, even if they were 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean. Americans could be divided into three, roughly equal, categories: loyalists (also called Tories, and loyal to King George III), patriots (who wanted independence), and fence-sitters (who could not make up their minds). Benjamin Martin, similar to about one-third of his fellow colonialists, was a loyalist. It is not until the death of one of his sons that Martin agreed to join the war effort in the fight for independence from England. Thereafter, he was a patriot.

Are African Americans accurately portrayed in the movie? No and yes. The blacks working on the Martin family plantation are free. Most rural South Carolina blacks in the 1770s were probably not free persons of color but slaves. Free blacks tended to be found in Charleston, a bustling port town that was also a haven for runaway slaves posing as free blacks. The tension between free/slave and town/rural African Americans is not addressed and, in the case of the exemplary Martin family, the issue of slavery is avoided entirely.

On the other hand, slaves were indeed offered freedom, by both the Americans and the British, in exchange for a period of soldiering. Many slaves ran away to take up the cause--on the side of one belligerent or the other--in hopes of realizing such a promise. Occam (Jay Arlen Jones) serves as the representative for enslaved African Americans. Denied an opinion on the war, he is simply handed over by his owner to Martin, to be used as a fighter in the local militia unit that Martin is organizing. Occam fights for six months before he learns that his service will result in his freedom; now he only needs to survive the war.

William Tavington (Jason Isaacs) was a character based on the real-life Banastre Tarleton. Was Tarleton really as brutal as portrayed in the movie? Doubtful. Early in the movie, Tavington orders Martin’s house and outbuildings burned, the livestock and wounded American soldiers killed, and he drafts the free black plantation workers into the British army; later, he orders the townspeople locked into their church and has it burned down, killing everyone; and, lastly, he deals with Lord Cornwallis for land in Ohio against his successful capture of Martin. The audience must see all of this to unequivocally agree that Tavington is the anti-hero; stories (even fabricated ones) about such deeds would have appalled those involved in the actual war but they are insufficient by themselves to convince movie-goers who are safely ensconced in the theater. American lands were certainly taken up, by colonists and foreign powers alike, with little regard for current occupants and bargaining for future property may well have occurred among British officers.

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