Here is the podcast link for Bits of History from the North Carolina on this book. I really feel it is a great read and it is on my shelf. The story of Guilford Courthouse is one of the most important in the Revolutionary War and is the culmination of the Race to the Dan, when Nathaniel Greene wore Cornwallis down through the Carolinas.

intent://tracks:274897411#Intent;scheme=soundcloud;package=com.soundcloud.android;end


The turning points in the Southern campaign can rightly be considered as important as Saratoga. These are mainly Huck's Defeat, Cowpens and Kings Mountain, with Guilford decimating the British officer corps.

It would be something like
Charleston
Huck's Defeat (backcountry militia)
Camden - serious defeat for the Americans. Damn near ended things, but brought Nathanael Greene into play.

Kings Mountain (militia vs loyalist)
Musgrove Mill. (Militia)

Cowpens (Dan Morgan and militia vs Tarleton- huge turning point)
Race to the Dan (Dan Morgan and Nathanael Greene split up and Cornwallis gives chase)

Guilford Courthouse - Nathanael Greene sets Cornwallis up in a similar manner to Dan Morgan at Cowpens and decimates the British numbers. Prelude to Victory at Yorktown.

Thanks!

I personally prefer The Road to Guilford Courthouse as it gives a reasonably deep overview of the entire Revolution in the Lower South through Guilford Courthouse. It was a unique environment.

Personally, I don't think historians have done enough work on how the social structure of the Lower South influenced the course of the campaigns.

Essentially a Civil War in the South. There were retribution killings going on long after the war was over.

Rabid - Very true. I had ancestors who fought in these battles (on the loyalist side) in the Carolinas, and their survivors had to move out (Tennessee and Kentucky) and start over when the war was finished. It was neighbor against neighbor and it wasn't pretty.

I may be wrong but I think I have read or heard somewhere that there is a theory that the mindset of those that "won" and remained in the Carolinas after the Revolution contributed to the fiery/hostile "attitudes" of their descendants bringing about the "real" civil war in the 1860's.

Just curious. Maybe our more learned contributors may have some thoughts on this?

Rabid Cougar said:

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I may be wrong but I think I have read or heard somewhere that there is a theory that the mindset of those that "won" and remained in the Carolinas after the Revolution contributed to the fiery/hostile "attitudes" of their descendants bringing about the "real" civil war in the 1860's.

Just curious. Maybe our more learned contributors may have some thoughts on this?

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I'm not sure what book or study you're referencing, but I'd be interested to read it. The closest I can think of is "Attack and Die," an old study laying the blame for Confederate failures on a cultural impetus for the tactical offensive. Or maybe "Albion's Seed"? Fischer was of the opinion that the Scot-Irish were culturally more aggressive, and the Carolinas were heavily populated in the piedmont with Scot-Irish.

I think there's something to the idea of an implicit distrust of monied power in the fringes of Southern society. That gets coopted somewhat over time as the lower classes are brought in to work in the orbit of the plantation system as overseers, etc, or at least participate in slave patrols. But in the less wealthy regions of the less wealthy states like North Carolina, that distrust never fully goes away. You wind up with a state that fights the Union almost as much as it fights the central Confederate government.

Dr. Watson said:

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I personally prefer The Road to Guilford Courthouse as it gives a reasonably deep overview of the entire Revolution in the Lower South through Guilford Courthouse. It was a unique environment.

Personally, I don't think historians have done enough work on how the social structure of the Lower South influenced the course of the campaigns.

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Road to Guilford is excellent no doubt, but Long Bloody and Obstinate is an easier read. I think those who aren't familiar could get bogged down in The Road to Guilford. That isn't to say that it isn't the best book out there. It probably is. I just think some other book are great for piquiing interest.

I have perused libraries in my areaand it almost seems like there is a gap in good writing about the revolution in the south, with a number of excellent books in the last 10-20 years eclipsing older books that are written with more bias.

My ancestors are mentioned in Road to Guilford, the Flennikens (Flanagan)who were at Hanging Rock. Andrew Jackson also happened to be there.

I don't want to get into Civil War discussion, as I think it is over discussed and studied, but I would note that the same Scots-Irish that populated the Carolinas via the Great Wagon Road are the same people, broadly speaking, that migrated to populate Tennessee, Alabama and Texas, among other places. Those folks migrated into Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia just after the revolution as land became available.

My ancestors were Scott-irish that mixed with melungeons. They were settled in the area around wilkesboro, and after the war migrated from Tennessee to Kentucky to Texas

Albion's Seed definitely offers ideas about the role that the Scot-Irish played in the Revolution and later the CW.

Basically, it goes something like this:

Borderland Presbyterian Scots in Britain are "convinced" to take up residence in Ulster to provide a bulwark against the Catholic threat of the Irish and the deposed Catholic king, (James II. ??). After a long period of mistreatment by the Royalist Anglicans who dominated the planter class in Ulster, the Scots (now Scot-Irish) realized they were getting screwed by the English and many of them decided to take their chances in the colonies. I think this took place primarily in the early 1700s (1700-1750?).

When they arrived in the Colonies, they tended to go straight to the "backwoods" where many of the same Royalist Anglican types refused to settle or just couldn't hack it, which is why there's such a concentration of RAs in the Chesapeake tidewater area. A lot of the descendants of these tough Scot-Irish settlers also were looked to by the Mexican govt to try and set up a bulwark against the Comanches in Texas between 1820 and 1836.

After advancing down the spine of the Appalachians on the Great Wagon Trail many settled in the western Carolinas. Barely one or two generations after arriving they found themselves threatened and imposed on yet again by the same RA types they fought in the border in Scotland/England, were screwed over by in Ulster and had been competing with and generally persecuted by in the Colonies for religious reasons (the only religions the Anglicans detested more than Presbyterians were Putitans, Quakers and catholics, in descending order).

Getting backwoods Carolinians to fight the redcoats wasn't too hard to do.

Obviously I didn't read about my topic because I know nothing of those books. It had to come from a campfire somewhere; either an ACW re-enactment/event or a Lewis and Clark Bicentennial gathering/event. I have also heard the theory about the Scot-Irish. Some of my relatives are those same Scotsmen in the Carolina's from around the Peedee River

I have ancestors on both sides from the Pee Dee, Cheraw District. They were German and the other name was Wright which I'm not sure if Scot or English.

As you know, that is Francis Marion country.

XUSCR said:

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OAlbion's Seed definitely offers ideas about the role that the Scot-Irish played in the Revolution and later the CW.

Basically, it goes something like this:

Borderland Presbyterian Scots in Britain are "convinced" to take up residence in Ulster to provide a bulwark against the Catholic threat of the Irish and the deposed Catholic king, (James II. ??). After a long period of mistreatment by the Royalist Anglicans who dominated the planter class in Ulster, the Scots (now Scot-Irish) realized they were getting screwed by the English and many of them decided to take their chances in the colonies. I think this took place primarily in the early 1700s (1700-1750?).

When they arrived in the Colonies, they tended to go straight to the "backwoods" where many of the same Royalist Anglican types refused to settle or just couldn't hack it, which is why there's such a concentration of RAs in the Chesapeake tidewater area. A lot of the descendants of these tough Scot-Irish settlers also were looked to by the Mexican govt to try and set up a bulwark against the Comanches in Texas between 1820 and 1836.

After advancing down the spine of the Appalachians on the Great Wagon Trail many settled in the western Carolinas. Barely one or two generations after arriving they found themselves threatened and imposed on yet again by the same RA types they fought in the border in Scotland/England, were screwed over by in Ulster and had been competing with and generally persecuted by in the Colonies for religious reasons (the only religions the Anglicans detested more than Presbyterians were Putitans, Quakers and catholics, in descending order).

Getting backwoods Carolinians to fight the redcoats wasn't too hard to do.

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My 5X great grandfather, the first person with my last name to set foot on American soil, stepped off of a boat from Ireland in 1776 in Philadelphia. The first time I saw that I was perplexed because my last name is extremely Scottish, but when I started reading more about Ulster Scots it made more sense. The next place he pops up is in the Washington County Militia muster rolls in September 1781. He claimed property and settled in the "backwoods" of Washington County Penn. In fact, the land is still in the hands of the family his son (a great uncle) sold the property to in the early 1800's.

He follows what you wrote in your post about moving out of the cities and fighting against the crown during the revolutionary war.

Edit: I wrote that my ancestor had purchased property in Pennsylvania, he actually didn't purchased any property but settled on a tract and filed papers claiming it a few years later.

Yes effectively, the Ulster Scots, who were later called Scotch-Irish or Scots Irish, came in usually through Philadelphia or through Delaware. They populated portions of Pennsylvania and gained land as they were able. As that land filled up, they were blamed for conflict with Indians, among other things. As a result many went down the Great Wagon Road to North Carolina and South Carolina. Some stayed inthe backcountry of Virginia also.

There were a few migrations directly into South Carolina that were Scots-Irish, but by and large, these folks came from Pennsylvania down. The Scots Irish were resentful of the Anglican church and had great difficulty with gaining land deeds (warrants) legally, as well as difficulty in paying their taxes, in part due to lack of specie and cash. The Regulator rebellion of North Carolina was a direct result of the way Carolinians were treated by officers of the crown.

Andrew Jackson's family came directly into the Carolinas without going through Pennsylvania. They went straight to the backcountry.

There is a quote somewhere from Cornwallis or Clinton or somebody, "This American rebellion is a Presbyterian rebellion." That is paraphrased, but it was said.

The Presbyterians did a poor job in ministering to their flock in the Carolinas over time. Many became Baptists and other denominations. That is another story, which is the story of the spread of Protestantism in the south.

(As an aside, the Regulators of South Carolina were a completely different movement)

JJMt said:

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Quote:

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The Presbyterians did a poor job in ministering to their flock in the Carolinas over time. Many became Baptists and other denominations. That is another story, which is the story of the spread of Protestantism in the south.

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If memory serves me right, Hofstadter in his famous book "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life" also ascribes the rise of the Baptists and Methodists to their willingness to ordain ministers without a seminary or any other degree.
Initially, the two predominant denominations in the US were the Congregationalists in the north and the Anglican Church in the south. Both denominations required seminary degrees for ordination. However, their seminaries could not keep up with the flood of immigration and the explosive expansion of the frontier westward. The Baptists and Methodists, without that requirement, were able to fill the vacuum.

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This is correct. People in those days turned out in large numbers for services and revivals, but the Presbyterians and Anglicans didn't provide ordained ministers much at all, so the Baptists and later the Methodists, among others, filed the void .