The Partisan War: The South Carolina Campaign of 1780-1782

by Russell F. Weigley

The American Revolution is most often identified by the famous battles in the northern states, but roughly eighty percent of the war was fought in the South. The Partisan War examines the details of the southern campaign of the Continental army from 1780 to 1782 under the command of General Nathanael Greene, who employed the support of South Carolina backcountry men who often engaged in "partisan warfare"―what later generations would refer to as irregular or guerilla tactics.

In this concise volume, author Russell F. Weigley traces the course of the war in South Carolina from the fall of Charleston in 1780, to the Battle of Eutaw Springs and the end of effective British military operations in the South Carolina interior in 1781, and finally to the British surrender and evacuation of Charleston in 1782. Along the way Weigley also details the battles of Camden, King's Mountain, and Cowpens, as well as many of the small engagements and skirmishes that comprised much of the war in the South. He also introduces readers to famed partisan leaders Thomas Sumter and Francis Marion. Readers will emerge with a clearer sense of the significance of South Carolina's role in the American Revolution and the intensity of the fighting that took place there.

Paperback

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Russell Frank Weigley, PhD, was the Distinguished University Professor of History at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and a noted military historian. His research and teaching interests centered on American and world military history, World War II, and the American Civil War. One of Weigley's most widely received contributions to research is his hypothesis of a specifically American Way of War, i.e. an approach to strategy and military operations, that, while not predetermined, is distinct to the United States because of cultural and historical constraints.

Weigley was born in Reading, Pennsylvania on July 2, 1930. He graduated from Albright College in 1952, attended the University of Pennsylvania for his masters degree and doctorate, and wrote his dissertation under Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, Roy F. Nichols. It was published as Quartermaster General of the Union Army: A Biography of M.C. Meigs (Columbia University Press, 1959). After receiving his degree, Weigley taught at Penn from 1956 to 1958, and from 1958 to 1962 at Drexel University. Then he joined the faculty at Temple as an associate professor and remained until his retirement in 1998 as Distinguished University Professor. The school considered him the heart and soul of the History department, and at one point he had over 30 PhD candidates working under him concurrently. He also was a visiting professor at Dartmouth College and the U.S. Army War College at Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Weigley's graduate teaching emphasized military history defined in a broadly comprehensive way, including operational, combat history but also extending to the larger issues of war and its significance; to the history of ideas about war, peace, and the armed forces; and to the place of the soldier in the state and in society.

Weigley was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, 1969-70. He received the Athenaeum of Philadelphia Award for Non-Fiction in 1983 and the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize of the American Military Institute in 1989. His Age of Battles received the Distinguished Book Award of the Society for Military History for 1992 for a work in non-American military history. He has served as President of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the American Military Institute. In recognition of his scholarly achievements, Weigley was named Distinguished University Professor at Temple in 1985.

- from Wikipedia