Author: Robert Scott Davis

Robert S. Davis is senior professor of History at Wallace State College, Hanceville, Alabama. His many publications include several articles and books on the American Revolution in Georgia and South Carolina. His research on the letters in American Husbandry started almost forty years ago when he learned of them from a publication of the late Dr. Albert B. Saye. Bob’s failure to find any Georgian who could have been the author led to his first publication in a scholarly journal. The idea that the plantation described was in South Carolina came from a suggestion by Farris W. Cadle, the authority on Georgia land grants and surveys.

 Autobiography and Biography Posted on

Elijah Clark and the Revolutionary American Frontier

Although a genuine folk hero, little has been published about Elijah Clark (often spelled Clarke) beyond well-intended historical fiction.[1] Like his contemporaries Daniel Boone and George Rogers Clark, he should be remembered as an important frontier leader. Clark’s first biographer, Absalom Harris Chappell, wrote in 1874 that he would never have been known if he […]

by Robert Scott Davis
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The War Years (1775-1783) Posted on

Fighting in the Shadowlands: Loyalist Colonel Thomas Waters and the Southern Strategy

Thomas Waters of Georgia was present in crucial events of the American Revolution in Georgia and South Carolina. He represented as an individual the problems of class and conscience affected by British efforts to restore the rebelling Southern colonies by “Americanizing” the war, what has been called the Southern Strategy. After 1778, the King’s ministers […]

by Robert Scott Davis
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Critical Thinking Posted on

Black Soldiers of Liberty

Estimates have appeared in print for generations that 3,000 to 5,000 Black soldiers served in the American military in the Revolution. These claims seldom offer documentation, being instead what historian Michael Lanning defined as only a “general consensus” of the number of African American patriots. Lack of records, reliance on anecdotal evidence, and other factors […]

by Robert Scott Davis
Loyalists Posted on

Women of Revolutionary War Georgia

The September 3, 2020 issue of the Journal of the American Revolution published “Margaret Eustace and Her Family Pass Through the American Revolution.” Margaret Eustace, the suspected female spy with a colorful colonial past, showed up in Georgia in 1779 and apparently misrepresented her considerable real family connections in the American and British armies. Eustace survived the […]

by Robert Scott Davis
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Letters and Correspondence Posted on

Margaret Eustace and Her Family Pass through the American Revolution

John L. Smith, Jr. introduced readers of the Journal of the American Revolution to Margaret Eustace in his article, “The Scandalous Divorce Case that Influenced the Declaration of Independence.” She had a second act in the American Revolution. In Georgia, late in the war, she made a name for herself. In November 1772, Thomas Jefferson represented Eustace’s […]

by Robert Scott Davis
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Constitutional Debate Posted on

The Dark and Heroic Histories of Georgia’s Signers

Revolutions are complex multi-sided economic, political, social, and technological events. They begin as conservative movements. As each side fears losing, all of these different interests radicalize but when the struggle is over, as historian Robert Calhoon points out, each side will adopt constructive compromise to find a way to govern together.[1] In the American Revolution […]

by Robert Scott Davis
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People Posted on

Portraits of Southern Partisans: Likenesses of Thomas Brown and Elijah Clarke

The battles of and between English born merchant Loyalist partisan Thomas Brown and illiterate native North Carolina American guerilla Elijah Clarke lacks for nothing, including drama. These two men fought each other more than once in a clash of their very different respective cultures/politics in Georgia and Florida. They fought many other battles at the […]

by Robert Scott Davis