What do you think?
Rate this book
South Carolina and the American Revolution: A Battlefield History
An estimated one-third of all combat actions in the American Revolution took place in South Carolina. From the partisan clashes of the backcountry's war for the hearts and minds of settlers to bloody encounters with Native Americans on the frontier, more battles were fought in South Carolina than any other of the original thirteen states. The state also had more than its share of pitched battles between Continental troops and British regulars. In South Carolina and the American A Battlefield History, John W. Gordon illustrates how all of these encounters, fought between 1775 and 1783, were critical to winning the struggle that secured America's independence from Great Britain.
208 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 2002
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
May 19, 2021
South Carolina is so strongly associated with Civil War history that it might be easy for some to forget how crucial a battleground the Palmetto State was during the American Revolution. But the fierceness and brutality of the Revolutionary War actions that took place in South Carolina are a matter of record, and John W. Gordon captures well the intensity of seven years’ worth of South Carolina battle action in his 2003 book South Carolina and the American Revolution: A Battlefield History.
Gordon, a professor in the field of national security affairs at Quantico’s U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College, looks at military history from a pragmatic point of view – appropriately, as his work at Quantico involves educating Marine officers who in all likelihood will be leading other Marines in future combat actions. Near the beginning of the book is one of the most terrifying sentences I have ever read: Gordon defines war as “a political act in which one state or side applies force against another in order to achieve the ends it wants” (p. 3). To think that that clean, 21-word definition can be applied to all the horror and misery and devastation of all the acts of war ever perpetrated, from the Iliad to 9/11 and beyond.
Gordon was also, before he began his work at Quantico, a dean of undergraduate studies and professor of history at The Citadel, the Charleston-based military college of South Carolina that has been training future military officers since 1842. Accordingly, Charleston-area readers may be charmed by the manner in which Gordon describes landmarks of the American Revolution in Charleston by linking them with contemporary downtown-Charleston locations like Bay Street.
A peculiarity of the American Revolution in South Carolina is that war came early to the Palmetto State, left for a while, and then came back in force later in the war – a fact that Gordon’s strictly chronological chronicling of campaigns and battles conveys clearly. The early chapters of South Carolina and the American Revolution describe well the complex mix of combatants in the state: “Whigs,” or pro-independence Americans; “Tories,” or Americans who favored continued union with the British crown; regular soldiers of the Continental Army; regular soldiers and sailors of the British Army and Royal Navy; Native Americans from the Cherokee Nation; and enslaved African Americans seeking their freedom.
Gordon also shows his ability to capture the drama of battle action, as when he describes the “Ring Fight” that took place near Tamassee on August 12, 1776, between 30 South Carolina militia commanded by Captain Andrew Pickens and a numerically superior force of Cherokee warriors:
The militiamen were making their way across a cornfield, when perhaps as many as 185 Cherokees suddenly opened up from the trees with muskets and rifles. They then rushed forward to try to surround Pickens’s men. He yelled for his men to form a circle. According to one account, it was actually a double circle. In this fashion, while the outer circle fired, those men in the inner one could reload weapons or themselves step forward to fire. The Indians likewise formed their own, larger circle in the cornfield, and the two groups blasted away at close range. Hand-to-hand fighting occurred when the Indians tried to break through. Some accounts say that muzzle blasts on this scorching day set the brush on fire. (p. 52)
The mention of Pickens’s leadership of the American militia in the Ring Fight reminds me of another strength of South Carolina and the American Revolution: Gordon’s skill at providing clear and swiftly drawn portraits of key figures on both sides in the great conflict. On the British side, cavalry commander Banastre Tarleton distinguished himself by his tactical skill, and also by the cruelty with which his Legion waged war: beatings of civilians, looting of property, the exhumation of the body of a slain American leader, and even no-quarter executions of surrendered American soldiers (a practice that the Americans came to refer to as “Tarleton’s quarter”).
On the American side, the most noteworthy commanders, along with Pickens, included Thomas Sumter, “the Gamecock,” and Francis Marion, “the Swamp Fox,” both of whom came to prominence during the 1780 fighting in the South Carolina backcountry, after the British had besieged and taken Charleston and seized control of a large part of the state’s territory. Sumter led operations “mainly in what is today sometimes called the midlands of South Carolina – roughly the geographic midsection of the state”; Marion worked in “the area immediately below Sumter’s: the lowcountry and the coastal plain bordering it” (p. 104). In the face of the British Army’s overwhelming superiority in numbers of soldiers and amount of munitions, both Sumter and Marion used guerrilla tactics, and their knowledge of the geography of their state and region, to devastating effect.
Sometimes, the military events chronicled in South Carolina and the American Revolution reflect larger developments elsewhere in the war. I was struck, for example, by Gordon’s description of the battle of Hobkirk’s Hill, fought in the north-central part of the state on April 25, 1781. The British commander was Lieutenant Colonel Francis Lord Rawdon. The American forces, a combination of Continental Army regulars and state militia, were commanded by General Nathanael Greene, the Rhode Island-born officer who became the greatest American general of the Revolutionary War’s Southern campaigns.
Gordon points out that, as with Greene’s command at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse a month earlier, Greene was “eventually driven from the field. Yet the costs to Rawdon were, like those of [Earl] Cornwallis at Guilford Courthouse, also very high. Thanks to Rawdon’s audacity and skill, the British had gained another tactical victory at Greene’s expense – but at the forfeiture of high-quality troops” (pp. 150-51). As a practical military man, Gordon seems to appreciate the way Greene made the best of what he had, and worked with the resources the revolutionary American government was able to provide; and even if Greene was never able to win a decisive, Cannae-style victory of annihilation, he seems to have excelled at dealing his enemy the slower death of a thousand cuts.
I read South Carolina and the American Revolution: A Battlefield History while visiting Charleston. My wife and I stayed at a historic inn that was once the home of Governor John Rutledge – a man who, during the dark days of 1780, was, in Gordon’s words, “the de facto Revolutionary government of the State – not merely the head of government but the sole government” (p. 104; emphasis in original).
It was early in March 2020, just before the outbreak of the novel coronavirus/COVID-19 epidemic across the United States of America; and in our hotel, and at the seafood restaurants where we enjoyed shrimp-and-grits, and in the sweetgrass-basket shops at the City Market, everyone was talking about the coronavirus, wondering about how things would change when the coronavirus arrived. Suddenly, it was quite easy to look back 240 years. Just so, I thought, Charlestonians of another early March, in 1780, no doubt looked ahead to the arrival of the besieging British fleet – living a seemingly normal life but wondering what would happen, what would change, when the Royal Navy arrived.
Gordon closes South Carolina and the American Revolution: A Battlefield History by calling attention to the prominence in that time and place of Thomas Sumter, “the original Carolina Gamecock”, who served in both houses of Congress after the war and lived all the way through to 1832, the last surviving general of the American Revolution. If you’ve noticed that fans of the University of South Carolina Gamecocks seem especially proud of their team’s name and its reputation for fighting spirit, perhaps the link to General Sumter’s Revolutionary heroism provides an explanation. Readers who are themselves South Carolina Gamecocks may read South Carolina and the American Revolution with special pleasure, but anyone with an interest in Revolutionary War history should benefit from reading this briskly written and well-researched book.
Gordon, a professor in the field of national security affairs at Quantico’s U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College, looks at military history from a pragmatic point of view – appropriately, as his work at Quantico involves educating Marine officers who in all likelihood will be leading other Marines in future combat actions. Near the beginning of the book is one of the most terrifying sentences I have ever read: Gordon defines war as “a political act in which one state or side applies force against another in order to achieve the ends it wants” (p. 3). To think that that clean, 21-word definition can be applied to all the horror and misery and devastation of all the acts of war ever perpetrated, from the Iliad to 9/11 and beyond.
Gordon was also, before he began his work at Quantico, a dean of undergraduate studies and professor of history at The Citadel, the Charleston-based military college of South Carolina that has been training future military officers since 1842. Accordingly, Charleston-area readers may be charmed by the manner in which Gordon describes landmarks of the American Revolution in Charleston by linking them with contemporary downtown-Charleston locations like Bay Street.
A peculiarity of the American Revolution in South Carolina is that war came early to the Palmetto State, left for a while, and then came back in force later in the war – a fact that Gordon’s strictly chronological chronicling of campaigns and battles conveys clearly. The early chapters of South Carolina and the American Revolution describe well the complex mix of combatants in the state: “Whigs,” or pro-independence Americans; “Tories,” or Americans who favored continued union with the British crown; regular soldiers of the Continental Army; regular soldiers and sailors of the British Army and Royal Navy; Native Americans from the Cherokee Nation; and enslaved African Americans seeking their freedom.
Gordon also shows his ability to capture the drama of battle action, as when he describes the “Ring Fight” that took place near Tamassee on August 12, 1776, between 30 South Carolina militia commanded by Captain Andrew Pickens and a numerically superior force of Cherokee warriors:
The militiamen were making their way across a cornfield, when perhaps as many as 185 Cherokees suddenly opened up from the trees with muskets and rifles. They then rushed forward to try to surround Pickens’s men. He yelled for his men to form a circle. According to one account, it was actually a double circle. In this fashion, while the outer circle fired, those men in the inner one could reload weapons or themselves step forward to fire. The Indians likewise formed their own, larger circle in the cornfield, and the two groups blasted away at close range. Hand-to-hand fighting occurred when the Indians tried to break through. Some accounts say that muzzle blasts on this scorching day set the brush on fire. (p. 52)
The mention of Pickens’s leadership of the American militia in the Ring Fight reminds me of another strength of South Carolina and the American Revolution: Gordon’s skill at providing clear and swiftly drawn portraits of key figures on both sides in the great conflict. On the British side, cavalry commander Banastre Tarleton distinguished himself by his tactical skill, and also by the cruelty with which his Legion waged war: beatings of civilians, looting of property, the exhumation of the body of a slain American leader, and even no-quarter executions of surrendered American soldiers (a practice that the Americans came to refer to as “Tarleton’s quarter”).
On the American side, the most noteworthy commanders, along with Pickens, included Thomas Sumter, “the Gamecock,” and Francis Marion, “the Swamp Fox,” both of whom came to prominence during the 1780 fighting in the South Carolina backcountry, after the British had besieged and taken Charleston and seized control of a large part of the state’s territory. Sumter led operations “mainly in what is today sometimes called the midlands of South Carolina – roughly the geographic midsection of the state”; Marion worked in “the area immediately below Sumter’s: the lowcountry and the coastal plain bordering it” (p. 104). In the face of the British Army’s overwhelming superiority in numbers of soldiers and amount of munitions, both Sumter and Marion used guerrilla tactics, and their knowledge of the geography of their state and region, to devastating effect.
Sometimes, the military events chronicled in South Carolina and the American Revolution reflect larger developments elsewhere in the war. I was struck, for example, by Gordon’s description of the battle of Hobkirk’s Hill, fought in the north-central part of the state on April 25, 1781. The British commander was Lieutenant Colonel Francis Lord Rawdon. The American forces, a combination of Continental Army regulars and state militia, were commanded by General Nathanael Greene, the Rhode Island-born officer who became the greatest American general of the Revolutionary War’s Southern campaigns.
Gordon points out that, as with Greene’s command at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse a month earlier, Greene was “eventually driven from the field. Yet the costs to Rawdon were, like those of [Earl] Cornwallis at Guilford Courthouse, also very high. Thanks to Rawdon’s audacity and skill, the British had gained another tactical victory at Greene’s expense – but at the forfeiture of high-quality troops” (pp. 150-51). As a practical military man, Gordon seems to appreciate the way Greene made the best of what he had, and worked with the resources the revolutionary American government was able to provide; and even if Greene was never able to win a decisive, Cannae-style victory of annihilation, he seems to have excelled at dealing his enemy the slower death of a thousand cuts.
I read South Carolina and the American Revolution: A Battlefield History while visiting Charleston. My wife and I stayed at a historic inn that was once the home of Governor John Rutledge – a man who, during the dark days of 1780, was, in Gordon’s words, “the de facto Revolutionary government of the State – not merely the head of government but the sole government” (p. 104; emphasis in original).
It was early in March 2020, just before the outbreak of the novel coronavirus/COVID-19 epidemic across the United States of America; and in our hotel, and at the seafood restaurants where we enjoyed shrimp-and-grits, and in the sweetgrass-basket shops at the City Market, everyone was talking about the coronavirus, wondering about how things would change when the coronavirus arrived. Suddenly, it was quite easy to look back 240 years. Just so, I thought, Charlestonians of another early March, in 1780, no doubt looked ahead to the arrival of the besieging British fleet – living a seemingly normal life but wondering what would happen, what would change, when the Royal Navy arrived.
Gordon closes South Carolina and the American Revolution: A Battlefield History by calling attention to the prominence in that time and place of Thomas Sumter, “the original Carolina Gamecock”, who served in both houses of Congress after the war and lived all the way through to 1832, the last surviving general of the American Revolution. If you’ve noticed that fans of the University of South Carolina Gamecocks seem especially proud of their team’s name and its reputation for fighting spirit, perhaps the link to General Sumter’s Revolutionary heroism provides an explanation. Readers who are themselves South Carolina Gamecocks may read South Carolina and the American Revolution with special pleasure, but anyone with an interest in Revolutionary War history should benefit from reading this briskly written and well-researched book.
March 2, 2021
A delight to read. Very informative. It will be very helpful when touring South Carolina.
It was interesting to read a history of the Revolution from a South Carolina perspective.
p. xv: "Cowpens, indeed, stands as perhaps the most complete tactical victory of the war--and in truth the only time a force of Americans so effectively overcame a British force its approximate equal in size."
p. 9: "The formalist tactics in use dictated the line-ahead formation, and also dictated that fleets would typically engage each other in conterminous line. The Royal Navy preferred to fight from the weather gage, or offensive, windward position. Its gunners were trained to shoot on the downward roll of the ship and aim for enemy hulls and decks. French gunners by contrast, were trained to shoot on the upward roll and aim for British sails, masts, and rigging--a reasonable practice, since the French usually fought from the lee guage or defensive, downward position."
p. 9: Three approaches to navy strategy:
1) Grand War
2) Fleet-in-Bearing
3) Guerre-de-course
p. 24: "The loyalists were called by their opponents Tories because that name denoted in their minds the party of support for the king and the policies of control from Whitehall. The other side called themselves the Whigs after the king's opposition in Parliament."
p. 24: "The British already spoke of the Whig group as rebels but the rebels saw themselves as patriots, a term thereafter to be enshrined in triumphalist, nationalistic accounts of the struggle."
p. 32: "The Cherokee nation paid dearly for its support of the losing side in the French and Indian War, and they now saw every reason to support the British against the land-hungry Americans in this latest of the white man's wars."
p. 45: "The loyalists were thus kept subdued and disheartened, and would remain so until British arms returned in strength to the South. No so for the Cherokees, however."
p. 50: "A first casualty--significant also because he was first man of the Jewish faith to fall in this war--was Francis Salvadore (or Salvador), son of a British merchant.
p. 54: "A substantial concession to the backcountry was the step of disestablishing the Anglican or Establish Church."
p. 56: "The victory at Saratoga was Britain's costliest loss of the war. It was also the single most important battle and, indeed, the turning point of the American Revolution. It was to prove the only large, unassisted victory of the war."
p. 60-1: "A French fleet under Admiral the Count d'Estaing arrived in due course, but in a succession of efforts, it failed to defeat the British fleet (which it outnumbered)."
p. 61: "Monmouth was the last major battle in which Washington faced the British without the presence of his French allies in the field."
p. 61: Stono Ferry, June 20, 1779
Photo caption: Sherman: "the young bloods of the South: sons of planters, lawyers about town, good billiards-players and sportsmen, men who never did work and never will. War suits them, and the rascals are brave, fine riders, bold to rashness, and dangerous subjects in every sense .... The men must all be killed ... before we can hope for peace."
p. 74: "(some of [the slaves] were happy to join the invaders)"
p. 85: "The taking of Charleston was Britain's single biggest victory of the war."
p. 97: "In South Carolina, actions against the wealthy, polished elite of the lowcountry had won victory for the American cause in the first stages of the war, but only hard fighting in the backcountry could now save it. What followed was an extremely bitter episode. The war in the backcountry would prove integral to the larger struggle, but it was also a war unto itself--fratricidal, vicious, fought on its own terms and sometimes for its own reasons."
p. 99: "The fact that it was that same lowcountry elite that would make the Revolution was cause enough for many to oppose it, choosing instead to stay loyal to the Crown."
p. 100: "When the Cherokees chose to take up the hatchet in the king's cause in summer 1776, their decision proved destructive to themselves and far more helpful to the Americans than to the British. It converted neutrals or even allies into Britain's enemies."
p. 100: "The Cherokees proved far more valuable to the Revolutionary Americans as enemies than they ever cold have as allies."
p. 103: "But looming above all were Banastre Tarleton and his Legion of green-jacketed dragoons and infantry. These, more than any other British or loyalist unit, came to symbolize the cruel, hard aspects of Crown pacification. Neutrals came to hate Tarleton and his command; rebels already did."
p. 103: Three key guerilla leaders:
1) Thomas Sumter -- the Gamecock -- operated in the midlands
2) Francis Marion -- the Swamp Fox -- operated in the lowcountry
3) Andrew Pickens -- none -- operated in the upcountry
p. 113: "[Cornwallis and Ferguson] greatly misread both the situation and the success of their pacification program to date."
p. 132: "The rifle, because it was slower to load than the infantry musket and did not carry a bayonet, remained essentially a hunting weapon employable in combat only under favourable circumstances."
p. 133: "Yet this level of exertion--the high-speed marches, the frequent stops to clear possible ambush points, the lack of hot food in winter weather--began to weigh heavily on the redcoats."
p. 135-6: "But Tarleton and his force of regulars had at last been beaten. In three months' time British policy in the war had sustained two body blows. Cornwallis had first lost the hope of a loyalist rising in South Carolina. The numbers involved at King's Mountain had been small but the portents of the battle large. Now a second commander, hated and feared by the Americans, a hotspur who had galloped across South Carolina and time and time again had proved invincible, had been beaten in a battle where the numbers on the two sides were approximately equal. Major General the Earl Cornwallis said of the Cowpens engagement, "[the] affair has almost broke my heart."
p. 140: Parallel to Culloden discussed
p. 147: "For the reality was that Greene had sustained a tactical defeat that was a strategic victory."
p. 164: "The battle [of Eutaw Springs] there would prove to be the last pitched battle fought in South Carolina in the Revolution."
p. 176: "in that time [Greene] had not beaten the British in a single battle."
p. 179: "It was not necessary for the army to win all the battles in order to win the war."
p. 181: "The combat and actions that achieved this result came in four main categories:
1) conventional,
2) guerrilla attacks against the lines of communications
3) civil war-type actions
4) frontier fights
It was interesting to read a history of the Revolution from a South Carolina perspective.
p. xv: "Cowpens, indeed, stands as perhaps the most complete tactical victory of the war--and in truth the only time a force of Americans so effectively overcame a British force its approximate equal in size."
p. 9: "The formalist tactics in use dictated the line-ahead formation, and also dictated that fleets would typically engage each other in conterminous line. The Royal Navy preferred to fight from the weather gage, or offensive, windward position. Its gunners were trained to shoot on the downward roll of the ship and aim for enemy hulls and decks. French gunners by contrast, were trained to shoot on the upward roll and aim for British sails, masts, and rigging--a reasonable practice, since the French usually fought from the lee guage or defensive, downward position."
p. 9: Three approaches to navy strategy:
1) Grand War
2) Fleet-in-Bearing
3) Guerre-de-course
p. 24: "The loyalists were called by their opponents Tories because that name denoted in their minds the party of support for the king and the policies of control from Whitehall. The other side called themselves the Whigs after the king's opposition in Parliament."
p. 24: "The British already spoke of the Whig group as rebels but the rebels saw themselves as patriots, a term thereafter to be enshrined in triumphalist, nationalistic accounts of the struggle."
p. 32: "The Cherokee nation paid dearly for its support of the losing side in the French and Indian War, and they now saw every reason to support the British against the land-hungry Americans in this latest of the white man's wars."
p. 45: "The loyalists were thus kept subdued and disheartened, and would remain so until British arms returned in strength to the South. No so for the Cherokees, however."
p. 50: "A first casualty--significant also because he was first man of the Jewish faith to fall in this war--was Francis Salvadore (or Salvador), son of a British merchant.
p. 54: "A substantial concession to the backcountry was the step of disestablishing the Anglican or Establish Church."
p. 56: "The victory at Saratoga was Britain's costliest loss of the war. It was also the single most important battle and, indeed, the turning point of the American Revolution. It was to prove the only large, unassisted victory of the war."
p. 60-1: "A French fleet under Admiral the Count d'Estaing arrived in due course, but in a succession of efforts, it failed to defeat the British fleet (which it outnumbered)."
p. 61: "Monmouth was the last major battle in which Washington faced the British without the presence of his French allies in the field."
p. 61: Stono Ferry, June 20, 1779
Photo caption: Sherman: "the young bloods of the South: sons of planters, lawyers about town, good billiards-players and sportsmen, men who never did work and never will. War suits them, and the rascals are brave, fine riders, bold to rashness, and dangerous subjects in every sense .... The men must all be killed ... before we can hope for peace."
p. 74: "(some of [the slaves] were happy to join the invaders)"
p. 85: "The taking of Charleston was Britain's single biggest victory of the war."
p. 97: "In South Carolina, actions against the wealthy, polished elite of the lowcountry had won victory for the American cause in the first stages of the war, but only hard fighting in the backcountry could now save it. What followed was an extremely bitter episode. The war in the backcountry would prove integral to the larger struggle, but it was also a war unto itself--fratricidal, vicious, fought on its own terms and sometimes for its own reasons."
p. 99: "The fact that it was that same lowcountry elite that would make the Revolution was cause enough for many to oppose it, choosing instead to stay loyal to the Crown."
p. 100: "When the Cherokees chose to take up the hatchet in the king's cause in summer 1776, their decision proved destructive to themselves and far more helpful to the Americans than to the British. It converted neutrals or even allies into Britain's enemies."
p. 100: "The Cherokees proved far more valuable to the Revolutionary Americans as enemies than they ever cold have as allies."
p. 103: "But looming above all were Banastre Tarleton and his Legion of green-jacketed dragoons and infantry. These, more than any other British or loyalist unit, came to symbolize the cruel, hard aspects of Crown pacification. Neutrals came to hate Tarleton and his command; rebels already did."
p. 103: Three key guerilla leaders:
1) Thomas Sumter -- the Gamecock -- operated in the midlands
2) Francis Marion -- the Swamp Fox -- operated in the lowcountry
3) Andrew Pickens -- none -- operated in the upcountry
p. 113: "[Cornwallis and Ferguson] greatly misread both the situation and the success of their pacification program to date."
p. 132: "The rifle, because it was slower to load than the infantry musket and did not carry a bayonet, remained essentially a hunting weapon employable in combat only under favourable circumstances."
p. 133: "Yet this level of exertion--the high-speed marches, the frequent stops to clear possible ambush points, the lack of hot food in winter weather--began to weigh heavily on the redcoats."
p. 135-6: "But Tarleton and his force of regulars had at last been beaten. In three months' time British policy in the war had sustained two body blows. Cornwallis had first lost the hope of a loyalist rising in South Carolina. The numbers involved at King's Mountain had been small but the portents of the battle large. Now a second commander, hated and feared by the Americans, a hotspur who had galloped across South Carolina and time and time again had proved invincible, had been beaten in a battle where the numbers on the two sides were approximately equal. Major General the Earl Cornwallis said of the Cowpens engagement, "[the] affair has almost broke my heart."
p. 140: Parallel to Culloden discussed
p. 147: "For the reality was that Greene had sustained a tactical defeat that was a strategic victory."
p. 164: "The battle [of Eutaw Springs] there would prove to be the last pitched battle fought in South Carolina in the Revolution."
p. 176: "in that time [Greene] had not beaten the British in a single battle."
p. 179: "It was not necessary for the army to win all the battles in order to win the war."
p. 181: "The combat and actions that achieved this result came in four main categories:
1) conventional,
2) guerrilla attacks against the lines of communications
3) civil war-type actions
4) frontier fights
April 2, 2025
The Revolutionary War battles in South Carolina ranged from potentially influential (Sullivan's Island, 1776) to significant (fall of Charleston and backwoods battles, 1780) and then absolutely critical (Cowpens through the end, 1781).
And they weren't all the same: there is a compelling range of types of battle (land/sea), groups of participants (regular troops and local Patriot and Loyalist militias), and types of tactics. Some recognizable names showed up on the field there as well (Tarleton, Greene, Morgan, Marion, Clinton, Charles Lee).
This book does a great job quickly setting the context and then giving battlefield details for the dozens of battles in this state, from the famous (Cowpens, King's Mountain) to those almost lost to history (Blackstock's Farm and many others).
This was a great find at the National Parks gift shop and it's an excellent companion if you are on a driving tour and have a separate reference with the battlefield locations (it doesn't include information about battlefield sites).
And they weren't all the same: there is a compelling range of types of battle (land/sea), groups of participants (regular troops and local Patriot and Loyalist militias), and types of tactics. Some recognizable names showed up on the field there as well (Tarleton, Greene, Morgan, Marion, Clinton, Charles Lee).
This book does a great job quickly setting the context and then giving battlefield details for the dozens of battles in this state, from the famous (Cowpens, King's Mountain) to those almost lost to history (Blackstock's Farm and many others).
This was a great find at the National Parks gift shop and it's an excellent companion if you are on a driving tour and have a separate reference with the battlefield locations (it doesn't include information about battlefield sites).
October 15, 2019
Superb book covering South Carolina’s harrowing efforts to counter the British campaign with its continental and volunteer troops. Greene, Sumter, Marion and Pickens all get credit for driving the King’s troops back to the sea. Morgan’s brilliant tactics at Cowpens are always amazing in the retelling. Very fair handling of both British and American troops and commanders, giving credit where credit is due,
July 6, 2020
The author was a member of The Citadel's History Department during my cadet years, but I never enrolled in one of his courses. This is a really good discussion of SC's role in the Revolution, however, it is not an in depth analysis. If you're looking for an enjoyable, quick read on the subject matter, I recommend it.
January 28, 2022
Gordon dives into the numerous battles of South Carolina with much detail along with giving context to the overall war effort of the Americans and Loyalists during the American Revolution. Great read for those interested in the American Revolutionary and familiar with the geography of South Carolina.
January 3, 2009
One third of the combat actions in the Am. Revolution took place in SC. John Gordon, the author, who is a professor at US Marine Corp. Command in Quantico, Va. explores how military policy and the battlefield history both strategically and tactically set the staging for the Am. success in the beginning of the U.S. He considers it from: from the brit. fleet's attack of the regulars; the Cherokees in the west; and the loyalist who supported the brit. toward a re-conquest. Of particular interest is what is known as the 'Snow Campaign,' of 1775 which resulted in subduing the brit. loyalist in the back country of SC by Gen. R. Richardson and Col. Thom. Sumter, the Gamecock (page 31);and the actions of the Brit. Col. B. Tarleton (p106) and Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox in the High Hills of the Santee area. Another good book, but you have to look for it that precedes this history is one called The SC Regulators, by R.M.Brown, pub. by Harvard U. Press (out of print + exp. when you can find a copy, $300 good shape) as it is about the actions of the back country regulators in the wake of the Cherokee War and the ideals of legislating law and the defense of liberty in pre-Revolutionary SC leading up to the Brit. invasion (much of the movie 'the patriot,' from several yr.s ago was based around these events).
February 20, 2009
Before reading this book, I hadn't realized the degree/extent of Revolutionary effortt existed outside of Boston-centric US. Quite well written, detailed yet not overwhelming. I particularity appreciated the balanced analysis of Tarleton, and came to more closely understand the British dilemma. Highly recommended.
December 24, 2024
A solid battlefield history of the battles fought in South Carolina during the American Revolution. Gordon provides great context for each side’s strategy in the South and offers some key insights—especially the integral role militiamen played in securing victory for the Patriot cause.
March 10, 2015
Dry but informative
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews