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WEJ at 21: How Partisans Fighting in South Carolina Helped Win the American Revolution

"Death of Major Ferguson at King's Mountain," Virtue & Yorston, 1863
Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University Library

General U.S. history courses in many high schools depict the American Revolutionary War as a series of battles in the Northeast - Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill, etc. - that lead inexorably to British General Charles Cornwallis's surrender of 8,000 British soldiers and seamen to a French and American force at Yorktown, Virginia, October 19, 1781. The truth is much more complicated, of course. A major component of the war, one that paved the way to Yorktown, was the fighting that took place in 1780 - 81 in the South - especially in South Carolina. In essence, according to Dr. Jack Warren and Dr. Walter Edgar, the war was won in the South.

This encore broadcast from 2016 is part of our Celebration of Walter Edgar's Journal at 21.

- Originally broadcast 03/04/16 -

News and Music Stations: Fri, Jul 02, 12 pm; Sat, Jul 03, 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Fri, Jul 02, 12 pm; Sun, Jul 04, 4 pm

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Dr. Walter Edgar has two programs on South Carolina Public Radio: Walter Edgar's Journal, and South Carolina from A to Z. Dr. Edgar received his B.A. degree from Davidson College in 1965 and his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 1969. After two years in the army (including a tour of duty in Vietnam), he returned to USC as a post-doctoral fellow of the National Archives, assigned to the Papers of Henry Laurens.