American Revolution

In his new book, Liberty is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution (2021, Simon and Schuster), Dr. Woody Holton gives a sweeping reassessment of the American Revolution, showing how the Founders were influenced by overlooked Americans—women, Native Americans, African Americans, and religious dissenters.Using more than a thousand eyewitness accounts, Holton explores countless connections between the Patriots of 1776 and other Americans whose passion for freedom often brought them into conflict with the Founding Fathers.Woody Holton joins Walter Edgar to talk about this “hidden history.”

For this episode celebrating Walter Edgar's Journal at 21, we’ve dusted off a 2004, on-the-road program, recorded at Litchfield Books on Pawleys Island. Walter's guest is the late Cokie Roberts, longtime NPR correspondent and commentator. Roberts talks politics, personal history, and about her book, Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation.

For this episode celebrating Walter Edgar's Journal at 21, we’ve dusted off a 2004, on-the-road program, recorded at Litchfield Books on Pawleys Island. Walter's guest is the late Cokie Roberts, longtime NPR correspondent and commentator. Roberts talks politics, personal history, and about her book, Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation.

“C” is for Camden, Battle of (August 16, 1780). The defeat at Camden was one of the worst losses suffered by the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.

“C” is for Camden, Battle of (August 16, 1780). The defeat at Camden was one of the worst losses suffered by the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.

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.

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 week on Walter Edgar's Journal, author Daniel Waters talks with Walter Edgar about a compelling chapter of the American Revolution. Waters is author of the book, To the End of the World: Nathanael Greene, Charles Cornwallis, and the Race to the Dan (2021, Westholme).

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.Bragg joins Walter Edgar to talk about this little known chapter of the Revolution.

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.Bragg joins Walter Edgar to talk about this little known chapter of the Revolution.