Partisans and Redcoats: The Southern Conflict That Turned the Tide of the American Revolution
Though sometimes underestimated in standard histories, the American  South was of critical importance as a theater of battle in the Revolutionary  War. When the revolution broke out, historian Walter Edgar writes, South  Carolina was far and away the richest of the American colonies. Charleston's  wealth was more than six times that of Philadelphia, and its sparsely settled  interior was a seemingly inexhaustible source of timber, cotton, and other  prized goods. The war came early to this valuable terrain, first in the form of  open combat between Whigs and Tories, then with the arrival of a large British  task force that seized Charleston and other ports. As Edgar writes, the British  and their loyalist allies then set about trying to tame the rebellious  backcountry through a campaign of terror and atrocity so severe that, he  maintains, leaders such as Lord Cornwallis and Banastre Tarleton deserve to be  considered war criminals in the modern sense. Under their orders, civilians were  assassinated and military prisoners summarily executed, farms and villages put  to the torch, crops destroyed, and livestock slaughtered.That campaign was ultimately unsuccessful, for instead of terrorizing the Scots- Irish settlers into submission, it galvanized resistance against British rule.  That resistance, Walter Edgar concludes in this useful study, helped assure  colonial independence.--Gregory McNamee--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.