This book uses 27 firsthand accounts from actual participants to help readers experience what life was like between 1775 and 1782.

Ten years before the start of the American Revolution, backcountry settlers in the North Carolina Piedmont launched their own defiant bid for economic independence and political liberty. The Regulator Rebellion of 1766-71 pitted thousands of farmers, many of them religious radicals inspired by the Great Awakening, against political and economic elites who opposed the Regulators' proposed reforms. The conflict culminated on May 16, 1771, when a colonial militia defeated more than 2,000 armed farmers in a pitched battle near Hillsborough. At least 6,000 Regulators and sympathizers were forced to swear their allegiance to the government as the victorious troops undertook a punitive march through Regulator settlements. Seven farmers were hanged. Using sources that include diaries, church minutes, legal papers, and the richly detailed accounts of the Regulators themselves, Marjoleine Kars delves deeply into the world and ideology of free rural colonists. She examines the rebellion's economic, religious, and political roots and explores its legacy in North Carolina and beyond. The compelling story of the Regulator Rebellion reveals just how sharply elite and popular notions of independence differed on the eve of the Revolution.

Through the eyewitness accounts of those who fought the battles and skirmishes Voices of the American Revolution in the Carolinas provides the reader with firsthand looks at how it felt. The entries in this volume are taken from first-person narratives by those on the scene, from officers such as Henry Lee and Banastre Tarleton to teenaged scouts such as Thomas Young and James Collins. Some narratives, like Daniel Morgan's report of the Battle of Cowpens, were written immediately or soon after the action; others, like Young's, were written when the boy soldiers had become old men. Some were written (and sometimes embellished) specifically for publication, while others were written as private correspondence or official reports. Some express a great deal of emotion and describe the authors' immediate experiences of war, while others concentrate on logistics, strategy, tactics, and the practical realities of an army battle; some, like Lee's, manage to do both.

Enhanced by period maps and first-person accounts, presents the history of colonial Rhode Island.

The tranquility of the magnificently restored Saint Andrews Parish Church, surrounded by stately oaks and ancient gravestones, belies a tumultuous past. If its walls could talk, they would tell a story as old as the human condition. Founded in the forest of a new colony, this simple Anglican church served planters and their slaves during the heyday of rice and indigo. Before the Civil War, ministry shifted to the slaves, and afterward to freed men and women. Following years of decline and neglect, Saint Andrews rose like the phoenix. The history of the oldest surviving church south of Virginia and the only remaining colonial cruciform church in South Carolina is one of wealth and poverty, acclaim and anonymity, slavery and freedom, war and peace, quarrelling and cooperation, failure and achievement. It is the story of a church that has refused to die, against all odds.

This Revolutionary War history analyzes the Continental Army’s extensive use of guerilla tactics—the beginning of modern Special Ops. When the American Revolution began, the colonial troops had little hope of matching His Majesty’s British and German legions. Indeed, Washington’s army suffered defeat after defeat in the first few years. But the Americans had a trump card: a reservoir of tough, self-reliant frontier fighters willing to contest the King’s men with unconventional tactics. While the British could seize the coastlines, the interior belonged to these brave men. In this book, author and former US Army colonel Robert Tonsetic analyzes a number of special operations conducted during the Revolutionary War. While Gen. Washington endeavored to confront the Empire on conventional terms, he relied on small units to keep the enemy off balance. The fledgling Continental Navy and Marines, no match for the British navy in sea battles, focused on disrupting British commercial shipping in the Atlantic and Caribbean. When the British and their Native American allies began to wage war on American settlements west of the Appalachians, Washington relied on militias to conduct raids and long-range strikes. Throughout the war, what we today call SpecOps were an integral part of American strategy, and many of the lessons learned and tactics used at the time are still studied by modern-day Special Operations forces. As this book establishes, the improvisation inherent in the American spirit proved itself well during the Revolution, continuing to stand as an example for our future martial endeavors.

A history of South Carolina from its beginning as an English colony to 1788 when it became the eighth state.

From the rocky slopes of Kings Mountain to the plains of Hannah's Cowpens, the Carolina backcountry hosted two of the Revolutionary War's most critical battles On October 7, 1780, the Battle of Kings Mountain utilized guerilla techniques - American Over Mountain Men wearing buckskin and hunting shirts and armed with hunting rifles attacked Loyalist troops from behind trees, resulting in an overwhelming Patriot victory. In January of the next year, the Battle of Cowpens saw a different strategy but a similar outcome: with brilliant military precision, Continental Regulars, dragoons, and Patriot militia executed the war's only successful double envelopment maneuver to defeat the British. Using firsthand accounts and careful analysis of the best classic and modern scholarship on the subject, historian Robert Brown demonstrates how the combination of both battles facilitated the downfall of General Charles Cornwallis and led to the Patriot victory in America.

When the Continental Congress decided to declare independence from the British empire in 1776, ten percent of the population of their fledgling country were from Ireland. By 1790, close to 500,000 Irish citizens had immigrated to America. They were was very active in the American Revolution, both on the battlefields and off, and yet their stories are not well known. The important contributions of the Irish on military, political, and economic levels have been long overlooked and ignored by generations of historians. However, new evidence has revealed that Washington’s Continental Army consisted of a far larger percentage of Irish soldiers than previously thought—between 40 and 50 percent—who fought during some of the most important battles of the American Revolution. Romanticized versions of this historical period tend to focus on the upper class figures that had the biggest roles in America’s struggle for liberty. But these adaptations neglect the impact of European and Irish ideals as well as citizens on the formation of the revolution. Irish contributors such as John Barry, the colonies’ foremost naval officer; Henry Knox, an artillery officer and future Secretary of War; Richard Montgomery, America’s first war hero and martyr; and Charles Thomson, a radical organizer and Secretary to the Continental Congress were all instrumental in carrying out the vision for a free country. Without their timely and disproportionate assistance, America almost certainly would have lost the desperate fight for its existence. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.