I’ve been a fan of military history since I was an army officer in the 1970s. Military history is fascinating, dynamic, exciting—it deals with people on the edge of real-world circumstances making life-or-death decisions. Of all military history, the Revolutionary War in the South is my favorite. It has been blessed with the richest trove of intriguing stories. Southerners love a great tale, and the southern war has provided volumes of them. The Southern Campaign teemed with such larger-than-life characters as Banastre Tarleton, the British officer everyone loved to hate, as well as Francis Marion, the beloved Swamp Fox of legend. Anyone who enjoys a great story will love the lore of the southern war.
In a world populated by official reports and officers’ memoirs, Babits and Howard dug into an untapped resource, the pension applications from the thousands of ordinary soldiers who had fought the battles.
In a flash, gone were the dry ponderings of commanders, lucky and unlucky, looking to resurrect or burnish their reputations. The soldiers fought the do-or-die moments on the front lines and told their stories just as they remembered them.
This book carries all the dash, the heroism, and the slug-in-the-gut terror of the men in the trenches. The authors are true wordsmiths of the old school.
I have read it a dozen times and still marvel at their storytelling.
This is the first book-length study of one of the Revolutionary War's most important battles. On March 15, 1781, the armies of Nathanael Greene and Lord Charles Cornwallis fought one of the bloodiest and most intense engagements of the American Revolution at the Guilford Courthouse in piedmont North Carolina. Although victorious, Cornwallis declared the conquest of the Carolinas impossible. He made the fateful decision to march into Virginia, eventually leading his army to the Yorktown surrender and clearing the way for American independence.In the first book-length examination of the Guilford Courthouse engagement, Lawrence Babits and Joshua Howard - drawing from…
My favorite part of writing the history of the Southern Campaign is cutting through the legends to find out what really happened. Southerners love stories, and the stories from the southern war have been told and retold, and in the process, legends have blossomed.
A great example is James Williams, a Whig militia leader from the backcountry who acquired the fervor of rebellion early in the war. He led his men heroically through many battles; nevertheless, he has gone down in history as the worst scoundrel of his time.
He was killed leading his regiment at the Battle of Kings Mountain, normally a hero’s death, but his chronicler hinted he was killed by Americans holding grudges. How much of this dishonor did he earn?
Graves delved deeply into the legends of this fascinating and complicated man to determine, once and for all, the real story of Williams.
Biography of Col. James Williams, highest ranking Patriot officer to die from wounds suffered at the Battle of Kings Mountain, October 7, 1780. The book is fully indexed with maps and source documents relating to one of the Revolutionary War's forgotten heroes.
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I can’t get enough of Tarleton. Hated and feared in America, he was a hero to the British, and remains a cherished forebear in the UK and Canada.
I read relentlessly on the debate over Tarleton, which continues to this day, unresolved, in stark black and white terms. This fact is most apparent in the debate over Buford’s Massacre.
On 29 May 1780, Tarleton utterly defeated Abraham Buford’s detachment of several hundred American soldiers at the Waxhaws, on the border between North and South Carolina. The carnage was extreme. Tarleton claimed Buford made serious tactical errors that laid his men open to the British cavalry. The Americans cried foul, insisting Tarleton cut down men surrendering their weapons and asking quarter. Who’s right?
This is another book after my own heart, looking to get through the legends to learn what really took place at the Waxhaws.
It is more than the parade of facts, one after the other in a pedantic trail of austere prose. History should grab you and rivet your attention to a subject so personal and so meaningful you can’t look away. If you agree, this book has it all.
Borick looked in a very unpromising place, the British records of Americans captured in the surrender of Charleston in May 1780, and found gold. The book is the heart-wrenching story of thousands of Americans sentenced to years rotting in dank cellars, or, far worse, on murderous prison ships.
The British didn’t want them, hence the title, part of a plea from Charleston’s commander to the British government. The Americans decided not to swap them for the British soldiers captured at Saratoga. The trade, they decided, would benefit the British at a time the Americans needed a win.
This book captures the plight of the lost Americans in a story with real heart.
Relieve Us of This Burthen is the first book-length study of Continental soldiers, officers, and militiamen held as prisoners of war by the British in the South during the American Revolution. Carl P. Borick focuses his study on the period 1780-82, when British forces most actively campaigned in the South. He gives a detailed examination of the various hardships of imprisonment and efforts to assist and exchange prisoners while also chronicling events and military policies that affected prisoners during and after captivity.
As have prisoners of any war, captives in the Revolution suffered both physical and mental adversities during their…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
Who was Nathanael Greene? An excellent question, and one that has puzzled Americans since he took command of the southern army in 1780.
He was a man of intense contradictions. A lapsed Quaker from Rhode Island, his claim to fame had been as a staff officer to George Washington. Unused to command, he lost battles but conducted the most successful campaign in the war. How he did it is a tale for the ages, brilliantly brought to light in this book.
Golway covers the campaign’s strategy and battle tactics admirably, but there was much more. There are many legends of Greene. Lord Cornwallis, we are told, said Greene was as dangerous as Washington, and he never felt secure when camped near him.
My favorite story of Greene holds that when he arrived in Salisbury, North Carolina, in early 1781, exhausted and beaten, a local woman took pity on him and gave him a bag of pennies. Greene, famously humorless, quipped the bag contained the entire resources of the southern army.
Did these guys really say these things? Finding out the answers is half the fun.
The overlooked Quaker from Rhode Island who won the American Revolution's crucial southern campaign and helped to set up the final victory of American independence at Yorktown
Nathanael Greene is a revolutionary hero who has been lost to history. Although places named in his honor dot city and country, few people know his quintessentially American story as a self-made, self-educated military genius who renounced his Quaker upbringing-horrifying his large family-to take up arms against the British. Untrained in military matters when he joined the Rhode Island militia in 1774, he quickly rose to become Washington's right-hand man and heir apparent.…
The Battle of Cowpens pitted Banastre Tarleton, the spoiled son of a wealthy English merchant family, against Daniel Morgan, an unpretentious soldier from the southern backcountry who rose through the ranks to command an army.
Tarleton, aggressive and impatient, believed in the cut-and-slash tactics of the cavalry. Morgan was a methodical planner who had gained fame as the commander of a rifle regiment, a remarkable feat in a world of muskets. Morgan formulated a carefully measured battle plan and laid it in the face of his opponent, the most hated British officer in America. The Battle of Cowpens was their duel, the match of aggression against planning, cavalry against infantry, British wealth and privilege against the raw courage of the frontier.
