John Joachim Zubly: PART 3, A Patriot Essayist Whose Cause Was Lost
byIn the 1760s and through 1775 John J. Zubly was the leading Whig in Georgia. He wrote a number of sermons and political tracts…
Georgia
John Joachim Zubly: PART 2, A Patriot Congressman Whose Cause Was Lost
byGeorgia did not send a delegation to the first Continental Congress in 1774. The least populous colony of the thirteen British colonies in North…
John Joachim Zubly: PART 1, A Patriot Minister Whose Cause Was Lost
byMaurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), a French philosopher, once said that the definition of a traitor was “a patriot whose cause was lost.” In the time…
March to Independence: The American Revolution in the Southern Colonies, 1775–1776
byBOOK REVIEW: March to Independence: The American Revolution in the Southern Colonies, 1775-1776 by Michael Cecere (Yardley, Pa.: Westholme Publishing for Journal of the American Revolution…
2
Contributor Close-Up: Robert Davis
byWhat inspired you to start researching and writing about the Revolution? In 1974, Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia began a state internship program. I…
2
Comte d’Estaing’s Georgia Land Grants
byOn the morning of October 9, 1779, one of the bloodiest and most forgotten battles of the American Revolution took place during the Siege…
Women of Revolutionary War Georgia
byThe 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…
This Week on Dispatches: Robert Scott Davis on Margaret Eustace and the American Revolution
byOn this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews historian, author, and JAR contributor Robert Scott Davis on Georgian socialite and possible British spy, Margaret Eustace,…
1
Margaret Eustace and Her Family Pass through the American Revolution
byJohn L. Smith, Jr. introduced readers of the Journal of the American Revolution to Margaret Eustace in his article, “The Scandalous Divorce Case that Influenced…
1
Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation: Information and Slavery
byLord Dunmore, John Murray, the 4th Earl of Dunmore (1730-1809) and Royal Governor of Virginia (1771-1776),[1] was an important political and military figure during…
3
Milton’s Odyssey: The Revolutionary and Post-Revolutionary Service of Georgia’s John Milton
byGeorgia’s fragile independence within the new American republic was shattered on December 29, 1778, when British troops attacked Savannah. Despite clear signs that the…
Cornwallis Quits Charlotte, Abandoning the Autumn Campaign of 1780
byThis article is a companion piece to one of mine that appeared in this journal on July 18, 2017. Beginning with the start of the…
10
Midsummer 1780 in the Carolinas and Georgia—Events predating the Battle of Camden
byBesides dealing with events elsewhere, this article relates in particular the plight of the Carolina loyalists and the way in which British ascendancy in…
2
David Holmes, Timothy Barnard, and Questionable Loyalties
byWith the Revolutionary War in full swing by August 1776, George Galphin penned a letter to his nephew, Timothy Barnard. Galphin started his letter…
1
9
The Road to Charleston: Nathanael Greene and the American Revolution
byThe Road to Charleston, Nathanael Greene and the American Revolution by John Buchanan (University Press of Virginia, 2019) John Buchanan’s latest account of the southern theater…
This Week on Dispatches: Robert Davis on Georgia and the American Revolution
byIn this week’s Dispatches host Brady Crytzer interviews distinguished historian Robert “Bob” Davis about Georgia’s unique role in the American Revolution as the colony that…
Johan Joachim Zubly: The Other Georgia Delegate
byWhen reading the excellent JAR article “The Dark and Heroic Histories of Georgia’s Signers,” I happened to recall another Georgia delegate to the Second…
2
The Dark and Heroic Histories of Georgia’s Signers
byRevolutions are complex multi-sided economic, political, social, and technological events. They begin as conservative movements. As each side fears losing, all of these different…
7
Across the River: The Failure of the American Southern Strategy along the Savannah River
byHidden in the Nineteenth Century histories of Georgia is a likely answer to a question that has puzzled students of the American Revolution in…
1
The Murder of Colonel Dooly Of Georgia: A Revolutionary War Mystery
byGeorgia historian Otis Ashmore wrote that “of the many heroic men who illustrated that stormy period of the Revolution in Georgia that ‘tried men’s…
1
Crossing the Great Divide: The Battle at Van Creek, Georgia, February 11, 1779
byDue to the work done by many people since 1976 in uncovering the lost history of the American Revolution, for the first time in…
4
The McKay Family’s Personal War on the Savannah River
byBy the end of the war, James McKay had earned quite a reputation for severity against the Loyalists. So much so that, even in…
Daniel McGirth, Banditti on the Southern Frontier
byThe story repeated itself time and again across the southern districts of Georgia. Alarms raised loudly across a broad area with tales of imminent…
19
Paddy Carr, “a honey of a Patriot”
byKnown primarily through a mix of fact and legend as the most notorious Patriot of the southern campaigns, Paddy Carr was also claimed to…
4
Anthony Wayne’s 1782 Savannah Campaign
byIn the minds of many people the surrender at Yorktown in the fall of 1781 brought the Revolutionary War to a close. However, the…
14
Victory for the Georgia Refugees
bySmallpox raged across the backcountry in the late spring of 1781 and both of the Refugee commanders, Elijah Clarke and James McCall, caught the…
The Georgia Refugees Turn the Tide against the British
byBusy with the Siege of Augusta and subsequent exodus from Georgia, Elijah Clarke and most of the Refugees missed the battle of King’s Mountain….
3
Elijah Clarke and the Georgia Refugees Fight British Domination
byWith the fall of Charleston, British columns spread into the southern backcountry. All of Georgia was occupied and the state government simply melted into…
12
The Arrest of Georgia’s Royal Governor Sir James Wright
byOn the chilly evening of January 18, 1776, Georgia’s royal governor, Sir James Wright, summoned Rebel leaders Joseph Clay and Noble Wimberly Jones to…
James Screven – Ambushed!
byAlmost lost to history, but not quite, the memory of General James Screven lives on a monument in the middle of the Midway Cemetery…
1
The Making of a Loyalist
byBy 1773, Creek Indians in Georgia had run up debts with traders far larger than any amount they could pay. The colony pressed the…
1
Richard Winn at Fort McIntosh
byIn the autumn of 1776 loyalists from East Florida under Thomas “Burntfoot” Brown and Daniel McGirth frequently raided the southern parishes of Georgia keeping…
Austin Dabney: Georgia’s African American Hero of the Revolution
byGeorge Rockingham Gilmer wrote a heroic saga of the life, service, and sacrifices of Austin Dabney, an African American Georgia Revolutionary War hero. He…
11
Captain McCall & Alexander Cameron in the Cherokee War
byNamed as the British Indian Agent to the Cherokee after the First Cherokee War, Alexander Cameron cultivated a very close relationship with the tribe. …
1
Portraits of Southern Partisans: Likenesses of Thomas Brown and Elijah Clarke
byThe battles of and between English born merchant Loyalist partisan Thomas Brown and illiterate native North Carolina American guerilla Elijah Clarke lacks for nothing,…
3
Spring Break Road Trip – Days 5 to 7 (NC, SC, GA)
byOur spring break road trip concludes the same way as the major fighting of the Revolutionary War did — in the south. The first…
4
Life in the Southern Colonies (part 3 of 3)
byTransportation in the eighteenth century was a major factor in the growth of economic activity in the colonial period. The most common transportation of…
2
Life in the Southern Colonies (part 2 of 3)
byRead Part 1 The economic life of the Southern colonists was also most positive as the colonial period continued. Up until the end of…
2
Life in the Southern Colonies (Part 1 of 3)
byAs the mid-eighteenth century arrived, life for the Southern colonists was the best that the British colonial experience could ever have yielded. In almost…