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Charleston Patriots in Exile During the Revolution

"The attack on Fort Moultrie, Sullivan's Island, South Carolina, on June 28, 1776." Charleston eventually fell to the British, oin May of 1780.
N.Y. Public Library (public domain); Artist: Chapin, John Reuben (1823-1894)
"The attack on Fort Moultrie, Sullivan's Island, South Carolina, on June 28, 1776." Charleston eventually fell to the British, oin May of 1780.

In the months following the May 1780 capture of Charleston, South Carolina, by combined British and loyalist forces, British soldiers arrested sixty-three paroled American prisoners and transported them to the borderland town of St. Augustine, East Florida—territory under British control since the French and Indian War.

In their new book, Patriots in Exile: Charleston Rebels in St. Augustine during The American Revolution (2020, USC Press), James Waring McCrady and C. L. Bragg chronicle the banishment of these elite southerners, the hardships endured by their families, and the plight of the enslaved men and women who accompanied them, as well as the motives of their British captors.

News and Music Stations: Fri, Nov 20, 12 pm; Sat, Nov 21, 7 am
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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.